/ 



<4P 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION, 



AND OTHER 



IP®11 w. 



BY CHRISTOPHER CAUSTIC, M. D. 

FELLOW OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSlCtANS, ABERDEEK, AND 

HONORARY MEMBER OF NO LESS THAN NINETEEN 

TERT LEARNED SOCIETIES. 



THIRD AMERICAN EDITION. 






BOSTON: -^ 

USSELL, SHATTUCK &C0. 

AND 
TUTTLE, WEEKS AND DENNETT. 

1836. 






|?34 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1836, 

By Thomas Green Fi:s3endb!t, 

In the Clerk's Office ot the DLstrrct Court of Massachusetts. 



Tuttle, Weeks & Dennett, Printers..... School Street- 



^^^-0^'^- ^ "• - -*'• ^ - t •' •" '' ■ " " ' • ^— t « m. ii»'»« 1 .< #<M#«s<i^pwpy) 



PREFACE 



In submitting^ the present edition of the following 
poem, entitled Terrible Tractoration, to the American 
public, the author complies not only with solicitations 
of personal friends, but with expressed wishes of many- 
gentlemen to whom he is personally a stranger. They 
say that by stripping folly of some of its disguises, and 
plucking the mask of deception from that impudent 
charlatanry, which encumbers the " march of improve- 
ment," this burlesque production may be of service to 
mankind. 

The origin of the poem entitled Tractoration, is as 
follows : In the year IbOl the author, (who is a native 
of Walpole, New Plampshire,) was in London, on 
business as an agent for a Company in Vermont. In 
that Metropolis he became acquainted with Mr Benjamin 
Douglas Perkins, proprietor of a patent right for ma- 
king and using certain implements, called Metallic 
Tractors. These were said to cure diseases in all or 
nearly all cases of topical inflammation, by conducting 
from'the diseased part the surplus of electric fluid which 
in such cases, causes or accompanies the morbid affec- 
tion. At the request of that gentleman, the author 
undertook to make the Tractors the theme of a satirical 
eff'usion in Hudibrastic verse. This was originally 
intended for the corner of a newspaper, but subsequently 
in the first edition enlarged to a pamphlet of about fifty 
pages royal octavo. It was published in the summer 
of 1803, well received, and a second edition called for in 
less than two months. A new and enlarged edition was 



IV PREFACE. 

put to press, and met with a favorable reception both 
from the public and the reviewers. From the success 
which attended Tractoration, the author was induced 
to publish in London a small volume of Original PoemSj 
which was well received and favorably reviewed. 

The author never would have written a syllable 
intended to give Metallic Tractors favorable notoriety, 
had he not believed in their efficacy. As conductors 
of what is called animal electricity, and in principle 
allied to Galvanic stimulants, even their modus operandi, 
he thought, might be in a great measure explained. 
Respectable English Reviews and other periodicals gave 
favorable notices of the Tractors, and Mr Perkins 
exhibited to the author testimonials in favor of those 
implements from several professors of universities, 
many regular physicians, surgeons, clergymen, and 
others, men of as high standing and influence as any 
in community. 

But although the author was willing to aid the pro- 
prietor of the tractors, he did not confine himself to 
topics connected with those implements. He made use 
of Tractoration as the title, and the tractors as the 
apology for a pocMi, in which he essayed to paint 

" every idle thing 



Whicli Fancy finds iu her excursive flight." 

Although many of the subjects alluded to, or animad- 
verted on were intended to be satirized, others were 
introduced merelj'^ to give them notoriety, or honorable 
mention in a humorous way ; to laugh loith rather than 
to laugh at the inventors, and rather to advertise than 
to stigrmtise their inventions, »&c. Persons of this 
description will perceive our objects, appreciate our 
motives, and recollect that Dr Caustic, by virtue of a 
figure in rhetoric, called iroriy, can speak one thing and 
mean another, without uttering falsehood 

The author conceives that he was fortunate as regards 
the plan of Tractoration. Dr Caustic, who may be 
styled the hero of the poem, is represented as a visionary, 
eccentric, would-be philosopher, endeavoring to effect 
" grand discoveries and inventions" of most'" immense 



PREFACE. V 

Utility," but had received so little encouragement that 
he was impelled by necessity to petiiion the Royal Col- 
lege of Physicians in London, for relief from penury, 
and assistance in his projects. In pursuance of this 
plan, every thing novel, singular, relating to any human 
pursuit, it was competent for Dr Caustic to make the 
object of discussion or animadversion. 

The miscellaneous poems, which, in this little volume 
succeed Tractoratlon, are, in part, selected from a vol- 
ume first published in London, and partly from poems 
written in this country since the author's return fron 
Europe. He hopes not to be condemned for unpardon- 
able egotism, if he quotes a passage or two from English 
and American reviews relative to his poetical produc- 
tions. If a traveller produces passports, or a candidate 
for office exhibits recommendations, we do not condemn 
him for pride, nor chastise him for presumption. 

The (xentleman's Magazine, published in London, 
Jan. 1804, contains a long notice of Tractoratlon, from 
which the following passages are extracted : 

" in the first Canto the author, in an inimitable strain 
of irony, ridicules those pretended discoveries and in- 
ventions of certain pseudo-philosophers both of the 
natural and moral class, which have no tendency to 
meliorate the condition of man." After many extracts 
from tiie work, and encomiums on each of the fuur 
cantos, the reviewers conclude, " Whatever may be the 
merits of the Metallic Tractors, or the demerits of their 
opponents, we have no hesitation to pronounce this per- 
formance to be far superior to the ephemeral productions 
of ordinary dealers in rhyme. The notes, which con- 
stitute more than half the book, are not behind th"^! 
verse in spirit. Who the author can be we have n'»t 
the least conception ; but from the intimate acquaintance 
he discovers with the different branches of medical 
science, we should imagine him to be some jolly son of 
Galen, who, not choosing to bestow all his arts upon 
his PATIENTS, has humanely applied a few escharotics 
for the benefit of his brethren,'* 

The following is extracted from a review written by 
the Hon. Daniel Webster, while a student at law in 
lies ton. 



▼ I PREFACE. 

" In commending Christopher Caustic, we are 
only subscribing to the opinions expressed by the peo- 
ple of another country. To be behind that country in 
our appreciation of his merits, were a stigma ; it is very 
pardonable to go beyond it. National vanity may be a 
iblly, but national ingratitude is a crime. Terrible 
Tractoration was successful on its first appearance in 
England, and as yet seems to have lost none of its pop- 
ularity. It belongs to that class of productions which 
have the good fortune to escape what Johnson angrily, 
but too justly, denominates the general conspiracy of 
human nature against coteraporary merit." 

Monthly Anthologij for April, 1805. 

The eminence of Mr Webster, whose acquisitions as 
a scholar are scarcely exceeded by his qualifications as 
a statesman, is our apology for exhibiting the above 
testimony of his approbation. 

We might add to the above, other extracts from about 
twenty English and American Reviewers, in which the 
poems contained in this little volume have been taken 
notice of with much commendation ; but we hope the 
work may meet a favorable reception without such ex- 
traneous assistance. 

In the present edition of Tractoration several new 
subjects are introduced and thrown into the crucible of 
Dr Caustic. Among these are Phrenology, Abolition, 
Amalgamation, Temperance, Reformation, &c. &c. 
These parts were written expressly for this edition of 
Tractoration, were intended to " shoot folly as it flies," 
and adapt the strictures of satire to the topics of the 
times. 

THOMAS GREEN FESSENDEN. 

Boston, March 25, 1836. 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 

Terrible Tractoration, 
Canto l.—Ourself. . . • • ^ 

Canto 2. — Conjurations. . . . .79 

Canto 3.— Manifesto. . . . .Ill 

Canto 4.— Grand Attack. . . . .149 

Additional Notes. . . . . .185 

An Ode 193 

The Morning. . . . • .197 

An Ode 199 

On the Death of Washington. . . 201 

Directions for Doing Poetry. . . . 203 

Horace Surpassed. .... 207 

Song 210 

Tabitha Towzer. . . . . .212 

The Splendors of the Setting Sun. . . 216 

The Sleep of the Sluggard. . . . 218 

"A Soft Answer turneth away Wrath." . 221 

"Having Food and Raiment, let us therewith 

be Content." .... 223 

Harvest — iNTEMPERANcrs. .... 225 

Lines Written in a Young Lady's Album. . 227 
The Independent Farmer. .... 229 

The Cultivator's Art. .... 231 



VJll 



CONTENTS. 



An Ode. ..... 

The Couasfi of Culture. . 

A Song. ..... 

The Evils of a Mischievous Tongue. 

CHEERFULNteS. .... 

Eulogy on the Times. 

The Art of Printing. 

The Old Bachelor. 

Caloric. . . . . . 

The Ills of Idleness. 



Paee . 
. 237 

240 
. 243 

246 
. 248 

251 
. 255 

257 
. 260 

262 



CANTO I. 

O U R S E L F ! 



ARGUMENT. 

Great Doctor Caustic is a sage 
Whose merit gilds this ii'on age, 
And who deserves, as you'll discover 
When you have conn'd this canto over, 
For grand discoveries and inventions, 
A dozen peerages and pensions ; 
But, having met with rubs and breakers, 
From Perkins' metal mischief makers ; 
With but three halfpence in his pocket, 
In verses blazing like sky rocket. 
He first sets forth in this petition 
His high deserts but low condition. 

From garret liigh, with cobwebs hung, 
The poorest wight that ever sung, 
Most gentle Sirs, I come before ye, 
To tell a lamentable story. 
1 



2 TERRIBLE TRACTORATIOW, 

What makes my sorry case the sadder, 
I once stood high on Fortune's ladder f' 
From whence contrive the fickle jilt did, 
That your petitioner should be tilted. 

And soon th' unconscionable flirt, 
Will tread me fairly in the dirt, 
Unless, perchance, these pithy lays 
Procure me pence as well as praise. 

Already doomM to hard quill-driving, 
'Gainst spectred poverty still striving, 
When e'er I doze, from vigils pale, 
Dame Fancy locks me fast in jail. 

Necessity, though I am no wit. 
Compels me now to turn a poet ; 
Not horn, but made, by transmutation, 
And chymick process, call'd — starvation! 

* I once stood high on Fortune's ladder. 

Although Dame Fortuna was, by ancient mythologists, 
represented as a whimsical being, cutting her capers on the 
periphery of a large wheel, I am justified in accommodating 
her goddesship with a ladder, by virtue of a figure in rhet- 
oric called PoETicA Licentia {anglice) poets' licentious- 
ness. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

Though poet's trade, of all that I know, 
Requires the least of ready rhino, 
I find a deficit of cash is 
An obstacle to cutting dashes. 

For gods and godesses, who traffic 
In cantos, odes, and lays seraphic. 
Who erst Arcadian whistle blew sharp, 
Or now attune Apollo's jews-harp, 

Have sworn they will not loan me, gratis, 
Their jingling sing-song apparatus. 
Nor teach me how, nor where to chime in 
My tintinabulum of rhyming.* 

What then occurs ? A lucky hit — 
I've found a substitute for wit ; 
On Homer's pinions mounting high, 
I'll drink Pierian puddle dry.f 



* My tintinabulum of rhyming. 
The clock-work tintiaabulum of rhyme." — Cowpee. 

t I'll drink Pierian puddle dry. 

Pursuant to Mr Pope's advice ; 
" Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring." 



4 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

Beddoes (bless the good doctor) has 
Sent me a bag full of his gas,* 

* Sent me a bag full of his gas. 

This wondrous soul-transporting modification of matter 
is christened by chymi sis gaseous oocyd of nitrogen, and, as 
will be evident, from the following sublime stanzas, and my 
judicious comments thereon (in which I hold the microscope 
of criticism to those my peculiar beauties which are not visi- 
ble to the naked eye of common sense) is a subject worthy 
the serious attention of the poet and physiologist. 

Any " half-formed witling," as Pope says {Essay on Crit- 
icism) *' may hammer crude conceptions into a sort of meas- 
Hted nonsense, vulgarly called prose bewitched." But the 
daring mortal, who aspires to "build with lofty rhyme" an 
^'Evi Monumentum, before he sets about the mighty enter- 
prise, must be filled with a sort of incomprehensible qidddam 
of divine inflation. Then, if he can keep clear of Bedlam, 
and be allowed the use of pen, ink, and paper, every line he 
scribbles, and every phrase he utters, will be a miracle of 
sublimity. Thus one Miss Sibyl remained stupid as a bar- 
ber's block, till overpowered by the overbearing influence of 
Phoebus. But Avhen 



-ea fraena furenti 



Concutit, et stimulos sub pectore vertit Apollo, 

the frantic gipsy muttered responses at once sublime, pro- 
phetic, and unintelligible. 

Indeed, this furor mentis, so necessary an ingredient in 
the composition of the genuine poet, sometimes terminates 
in real madness, as was unfortunately the case with Collins 
and Smart : Swift, Johnson, and Cowper, were not without 
dismal apprehensions of a similar fate. The wight, there- 
fore, who wishes to secure to himself a sublunary immor- 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 5 

Whicli snuffed the nose up, makes wit brighter, 
And eke a dunce an airy writer. 

With this a brother bard, inflated, 
Was so stupendously elated, 
He tower'd, like Garnerin's balloon, 
Nor stopp'd, like half wits, at the moon : 

But scarce had breath'd three times before he 
Was hous'd in heaven's high upper story ,*^ 
Where mortals none but poets enter, 
Above where Mah'met's ass dar'd venture. 

Strange things he saw, and those who know him 
Have said that, in his Epic Poem,f 



tality by dint of poetizing, and happens not to be poeta 
nascitur, nxust, like Doctor Caustic, in the present instance, 
seek a sort of cow-pock-like substitute for that legitimate 
rabies^ which characterizes the true sons of ApoUo. 

* Was hous'd in heaven's high upper story. 

Brother Southey then made the important discovery that 
" the atmosphere of the highest of all possible heavens was 
composed of this gas." Beddoe^s Notice. 

+ Have said that, in his Epic Poem. 
The same poem to which the gentleman alludes in his 
huge quarto edition of Joan of Arc, in the words following 



6 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

To be complete within a year hence, 
They'll make a terrible appearance. 

And now, to set my verses going, 
Like "Joan of Arc,' ^ sublimely flowing, 
I'll follow Southey's bold exemple, 
And snuff a sconce full, for a sample. 

Good Sir, enough I enough already ! « 

No more, for Heaven's sake ! — steady ! — steady ! 
Confound your stuff! — why how you sweat me ! 
I'd rather swallow all mount Etna I 

How swiftly turas this giddy world round. 
Like tortur'd top, by truant twirl'd round ; 
While Nature's capers wild amaze me. 
The beldam's crack'd or Caustic crazy !* 

— " Liberal criticism I shall attend to, and I hope to profit 
by, in the execution of my Madoc, an epic poem on the dis- 
covery of America, by that prince, on which I am now en- 
gaged." 

As liberal criticism appears to be a great desideratum with 
this sublime poet, I trust he will gratefully acknowledge the 
specimens of my liberality towards a worthy brother, which 
I propose hereafter to exhibit. 

* The beldam's crack'd or Caustic crazy. 
Or, it is possible, may it please your worships, that I — 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 7 

Tm larger grown from head to tail 
Than mammoth, elejDhant, or whale! — 
Now feel a "tangible extension" 
Of semi-infinite dimension ! — 

Inflated with supreme intensity, 
I fill three quarters of immensity ! 
Should PhcBbus come this way, no doubt, 
But I could blow his candle out ! 

This earth's a little dirty planet, 
And I'll no longer help to man it, 
But off will flutter, in a tangent. 
And make a harum scarum range on't ! 

Stand ye appall'd ! quake ! quiver ! quail ! 
For lo I stride a comet's tail ! 
If my deserts you fail t' acknowledge, 
I'll drive it plump against your college ! 

But if your Esculapian band 
Approach my highness, cap in hand, 

I for the matter of that am a little te—te— tipsy, or so.— 
But as there may perhaps be, as it were, now and then, one 
of your Right Worshipful Fraternity, who has been in a sim- 
ilar predicament se— se ipse, I hope I shall receive your 
worships' permission to stagger on with a jug full of gas in 
my noddle, at least, through a stanza or two. 



O TERRIBLE TRACTORATIOK, 

And show vast tokens of humility, 
I'll treat your world with due civility. 

But now, alas ! a wicked wag 

Has pull'd away the gaseous bag : 

From heaven, where thron'd, like Jove I sat, 

rmfall'n! fall'n ! fall'n ! down, flat! flat! flat!* 

Thus, as the ancient story goes. 
When o'er Avernus flew the crows, 
They were so stench'd in half a minute, 
They giddy grew and tumbled in it : 

And thus a blade, who is too handy 
To help himself to wine or brandy, 
At first gets higher, then gets lower, 
Then tumbles dead drunk on the floor ! 

Such would have been my sad case, if 
I'd taken half another tiff"; 
And even now, I cannot swear, 
I'm not as mad as a March hare ! 

* I'm fall'n ! fall'n ! fall'n ! down, flat ! flat ! flat I 

See Dryden's Feast of Alexander, where one king Darius 
has a terrible tumble down, beautifully described by half a 
dozen " fallens." But I think the Persian monarch did not 
after all, fall quite so Jlat as Doctor Caustic. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. if 

How these confounded gases serve us ! 
But Beddoes says that I am nervous, 
And that this oxyd gas of nitre 
Is bad for such a nervous writer ! 

Indeed, Sir, Doctor, very odd it is 
That you should deal in such commodities, 
Which drive a man beside his wits. 
And women to hysteric fits !* 

Now, since this wildering gas inflation 
Is not the thing for inspiration, 
ril take a glass of cordial gin, 
Ere my sad story I begin ; 

And then proceed with courage stout. 
From "hard-bound brains" to hammer out 
My case forlorn, in doleful ditty, 
To melt your worships' hearts to pity. 

Sirs, I have been in high condition, 
A right respectable Physician ; 

* And women to hysteric fits. 

. See the lamentable case of the Lady, page 1 6th of Dr 
Beddoes's pamphlet, who, taking a drop too much of this 
panacea, fell into hysterical fits, &c. 



10 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

And passed, with men of shrewd discerning, 
For wight of most prodigious learning ; 

For I could quote, with flippant ease, 
Grave Galen and Hippocrates, 
Brown, Cullen, Sydenham and such men, 
Besides a shoal of learned Dutchmen.* 

In all disorders was so clever, 
From tooth ache, up to yellow fever. 
That I by learned men was reekon'd 
Don Esculapius the second ! 

No case to me was problematic ; 
Pains topical or symptomatic. 
From aching head, to gouty toes, 
The hidden cause I could disclose. 

Minute examiner of Nature, 
And most sagacious operator, 



* Besides a shoal of learned Dutchmen. 
Boerhaave, Steno, De Graff, Swammerdam, Zimmerman, 
cum multis aliis. By the by, gentlemen, this epithet shoal is 
not always to be taken in a shallow sense ; but when applied 
to such deep fellows, must be considered as noun of multi- 
tude, as we say a shoal of herrings. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 11 

I could descern, prescribe, apply 
And cure* disease in louse's eye. 

And insects smaller, ten degrees 
Than those which float in summer's breeze, 
Drugg'd with cathartics and emetics. 
Then doctor' d off with diuretics. 

I had a curious little lancet, 
Your worship could not help but fancy it, 
By which I show'd with skill surprising, 
The whole art of ^ea-botoraizing! — 

And with it oft inoculated 

(At which friend Jenner'll be elated) 

Flies, fleas, and gnats, with cow-pock matter, 

And not one soul took small-pox a'ter ! — 



* discern, prescribe, apply, 

And cure 

My learned friend, Dr Timothy Triangle perusing the 
manuscript of this my pithy petition, discovered that my 
description of the tnocius operandi on the insect as above, 
compared with the celebrated " veni, vidi, vici,^^ as a specimen 
of fine writing, is superior in the direct proportion of four to 
three; consequently Dr Caustic has advanced one step 
higher in the climax of sublimity than Julius Cesar. 



12 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

Could take a microscopic mite, 

Invisible to naked sight ; 

Ad injinitum^ could divide it, 

For times unnumbered have I tried it. 

With optic glass, of great utility, 
Could make the essence of nihility 
To cut a most enormous figure, 
As big as St Paul's church, or bigger ! 

Could tell, and never be mistaken. 
What future oaks w^ere in an acorn ; 
And even calculate, at pleasure. 
The cubic inches they would measure. 

Scotland could never boast a wight, 
Could match ourself at second sight.* 

* Could match ourself at second sight. 
That your worships may be able to form something like 
an idea of the wonderful ken of our mental optics, it will be 
necessarj^ to con with diligence the opinions of Dr Johnson 
on this subject, as expressed in his tour to the Hebrides. 
The Doctor there tells us, that though he " never could ad- 
Tance his curiosity to conviction, yet he came away at last, 
•MTiZZiTT^ to believe." But we would have all those who an- 
ticipate the deriving any advantage from our slight at second 
seeing, not only willing, but absolutely predetermined to 
" believe," positive eyidence to the contrary notwithstanding. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 13 

Nor Wales a wizard, who so well 
Could destiny's decrees foretel. 

For we'd a precious knack at seeing, 
Not only matters not in being, 
But ever and anon would still be 
Foreseeing things which never will be — * 

Great manufacturer of weather 

Nine Lapland witches, clubb'd together, 

With all the elements a stewing, 

Are not our match at tempest brewing. 

For many a popular almanac, 
Within say half a century back, 
We foretold every shine and storm 
Which heaven can burnish or deform. 

* Foreseeing^ things which never will be. 
Yes, gentlemen ; among other great and wonderful events 
which we foretold, but which never have happened, and more- 
over never will happen, was the restoration of the Jews by 
the intervention of that renowned pacificator, Buonaparte. 
We first prophecied, and many men of our cast who had a 
knack at prying into futurity, echoed our prediction, that the 
pious emperor of the Gauls would make Jerusalem the head 
quarters of the Millennium, and under our auspices many a 
wandering Jew was recruited, and stood in readiness to 
march at a moment's warning to take possession of his patri- 
monial property. 



14 TERRIBLE TRACTORATIOW. 

Though no two calendars agreed, 
All were infallible indeed ; 
Of course no conjurer can stand higher 
Than Caustic as a prophesier. 

Discover'd worlds within the pale 

Of tip-end of a tadpole's tail, 

And took possession of the same 

In our good friend. Sir Joseph's name ;* 

And soon shall publish, by subscription, 
A topographical description 
Of worlds aforesaid, which shall go forth 
InfooVs cap folio, gilt, and so forth, — 

Could tell how far a careless fly 
Might chance to turn this globe awry, 
If flitting round, in giddy circuit. 
With leg or wing, he kick or jerk it ! — f 

* In our good friend, Sir Joseph's name. 

This was immensely proper, as I propose colonizing these 
hitherto Terrce Incognitce, and know of no person in exis- 
tence, except myself (who am now decrepit with age, and, 
alas, sadly poverty stricken) whose scientific qualifications, 
knowledge of the coast, and well known ardent zeal in the 
science of Tadpolism, so well entitle him to command such 
important expedition. 

t With leg or wing, he kick or jerk it. 
Could we command the years of a Nestor, " the indelible 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 15 

The mystic characters of Nature, 
We read like Spurtzheim or Lavater, 
To us her lineaments are labels, 
Which stare like capitals on play bills. 

From bearings of the different osses, 
A.nd shapes of forehead, chin, proboscis, 
The frons and occiput's topography. 
Can write a man's complete biography. 

Have drawn nine million diagrams, 
Which wags denominate Aim flams, 

ink" of a Lettersom, and the diligence of a Dutch commen- 
tator, we should still readily acknowledge that our powers 
were totally inadequate to the task of eulogising, in propor- 
tion to their merits, the philosophical and literary perform- 
ances of that profound sage, Dr James Anderson, LL. D., 
F. R. S., Scotland^ &c, &c. whose mysterious hints afford 
a clue by which we have been enabled to add lustre to the 
present age, by many of our own sublime discoveries and 
inventions. 

In his deep work called " Recreations in Agriculture and 
Natural History,^' the Doctor says, among other things not 
less marvelous, " The mathematician can demonstrate with 
the most decisive certainty, that no Jly can alight on this 
globe which we inhabit, without communicating motion to it ; 
and he can ascertain, with the most accurate precision, ifso 
he choose to do^' (by the by, this sine qua non part of the 
sentence is very beautiful, and not at all redundant) " what 
must be the exact amount of the motion thus produced." 
Vol. ii. p. 350. 



16 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

Though worth your worshipful reliance 
For shortest outlines of the science. 

By dint of scientiific thumps 

Made famous phrenologic bumps, 

And always found the effect was greater 

Than when such bumps were made by nature. 

Developements, thus manufactured, 
Caused many a thick skull to be fractured 
But pity well deserves defiance 
When e'er she thwarts the march of science. 

Thus Rousseau, Voltaire, Paine, and others, 

Our revolutionizing brothers, 

Got up French freedom's cruel farces, 

And made worse bumps than ours in masses. 

And Godwin, too, in substance said, 
Our bodies politic must be bled ; 
Man's only mode of melioration 
Is doctoring off one generation, — * 

* Is doctoring oflf one generation. 

" Perhaps no important revolution was ever bloodless. It 
may be useful in this place to recollect in what the mischief 
of shedding blood consists. The abuses, which at present 



TERRIBLE TRA.CTORATION. 17 

And substituting in its place 

A spotless super-human race, 

Pure as an unborn infant's dream, 

Of moonshine made, and moved by steam. 

We have for sale the seeds of bumps, 
Which, dibbled in the heads of gumps, 
Take root without the aid of thumps 
And grow as large as camels' humps. 

Can take a wicked ugly tyke, 

And every organ we dislike 

Pull out or drive in, at a venture, 

Thus change each bump to an indenture. 

Protuberant destrudiveness, 
Placed in our phrenologic press. 
Is render'd, by its power immense, 
Exuberant benevolence. 

In infancy, in half a trice, 
We thus extinguish every vice, 



exist in all political societies are so enormous, the oppres- 
sions which are exercised are so intolerable, the ignorance 
and vice which they entail so dreadful, that possibly a dis- 
passionate inquirer might decide that, if their annihilation 
could be purchased by an instant sweeping ofFof every human 
2 



t 



18 TERRIBLE TRACTORATI«WV, 

Before it has bad time to harden, 
As easily as weed a garden. 

We keep fine faculties ready made, 
Thus beat dame Nature at her trade 
Of manufacturing mental powers, 
For hers are not half up to ours. 

We make a thing we call Nousometer^ 
Or Phrenological Micrometer ; 
The grand quintessence of inv<;ntions 
For measuring the mind's dimensions. 

This shows men's vices and propensities. 
Their aggravations and intensities, 
By marks indelible, and plain- 
Ly legible as that on Cain. 

Nousometers, our hope and trust is, 
Will supersede our courts of justice, 
By proving guilt in all gradations. 
In style of Euclid's demonstrations. 

To crown our cheap mode of conviction 
By ready punishment's infliction, 

being now arrived at maturity, from the face of the earthy 
the purchase would not be too dear," &c. &c. — Godtcin't 
Political Justice. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 19 

The rabblement will string up gratis 
The convicts of our apparatus. 

By said machine and foresaid books, 
Rogues, stigmatized with hanging looks, 
We whip and kick and hang ad libitum^ 
Or take the liberty to gibbet 'em. 



If you're dissatisfied with that, 
Our all-efficient verbum sat 
Will presto raise almighty mobs, 
Inured to cruel dirty jobs. 

Those LL. D.s' of Lynch's law* 
Don't value dignity a straw, 
Will thump your worships into chowder 
To save expense of ropes and powder. 

* Those LL. D.s' of Ljmch's Law. 

Lynch Laic, is, we believe, synonymous with mob law^ 
sometimes called club law. By this law summary injustice 
is executed by an ignorant and furious multitude, who burn 
and destroy, plunder and murder, without measure and with- 
out mercy, the property and persons of anybody and every- 
body who happen to be obnoxious, or are pointed out as 
objects entitled to the particular attention of their mobocratic 
mightinesses. Sometimes the poor individuals who are 
so unlucky as to fall into the clutches of these horrible hu- 
man harpies, are subjected to mock trials, in which the ac- 
cusers enact the parts of law makers, judges and executioners . 
A man by "the name of Lynch, who lives, or has lived, some- 



JSP, 



20 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

Those ne plus ultras of atrocity, 
By blind and tiger-like ferocity 
Disgraceful deeds and ruthless ravages 
Have shown themselves outrageous savages. 

Yet, whereas Justice has'nt yet hung them, 
Nor showers of grape-shot rain'd among them, 
We'll use the rogues, when we think best, 
For executing our behest. 

Thus reptiles of the worst descriptions 
Coerced the obstinate Egyptians ; 
And serpents erst by stings and bites 
Punish'd backsliding Israelites. 



'& 



Judge Lynch, thou dephlegmated evil, 
Double distill'd essence of the devil, 
Total depravity, we would 
Hit you still harder if we could. 

It makes one truly melancholic 
To see your mobs, most diabolic. 
Plunder and murder, with impunity, 
Innocent members of community. 

where in the West, was active in this mode of taking cogni- 
zance of offences, whence the whole process is called Lynch 
law. But thereby hangs a tale, which we either do not recol- 
lect, or have never heard ; and in either case,'we shall not, 
at present, trouble your worships with its recital. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 21 

You talk of liberty, what stuff! 
A mob's a monarch, sure enough, 
And one true liberty most dreads, 
A tyrant with ten thousand heads. 

There is no despot in creation 
However high and firm his station, 
Who feels not more responsibility 
Than Lynch' s terrible mobility. 

Our institutes of education 
Are under moral obligation 
To use said implement of ours 
For graduating mental powers. 

This criminal and dunce detector 
May save from many a useless lecture, 
From toiling quarter after quarter 
In filling riddle sieves with water. 

We license none for teaching schools, 
Unless by Gall's and Spurzheim's rules 
We find his sconce, in every section, 
Bears phrenological inspection. 

We apprehended Brougham's schoolmaster, 
And took his head sheer off — in plaster, 



22 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION^ 

And found his bumps with ours accord 
Before we let him "go abroad." 

Our said mind-measurer may be set 
To sound the cunningest coquette, 
And ascertain by mensuration 
The limits of her inclination. 

Heu quantum suff^ we are afraid this 
Developement will shock the ladies ; 
But, hush, my dears, for time to conie^ 
No mummy ever was more mum. 

Our far-famed system also suits 

The i)hysiology of brutes ; 

Its application never fails 

From mammoth down to snakes and snails. 

Have fourteen folios, stereotypes 
Call'd craniology of snipes,* 
All which will figure, with propriety, 
In annals of a learn'd society. 

* Call'd craniology of snipes. 

Il would require an immensity of books, and an eternity 
of time to describe or even allude to the physological crani- 
ological, physiognomical, phrenological, &c. &c. &c. theories 
of Dr Gall, and a multitude of his followers. We shall, 
therefore, attempt no such thing, but content ourself with 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. ^S 

As manufacturing Phrenologist 
Our articles need no apologist, 
Because our skill is ten times greatet, 
As said before, than that of Nature. 

Nature, although in some things clever^ 
Has hut the fulcrum and the lever 
To her friend Doctor Caustic given, 
To elevate this world to heaven. 

We have made many a clever notion 
To perpetrate perpetual motion 
Which went to perpetuity's borders, 
Then stopped a bit for further orders. 

Though said machines would hardly tracG 
The farthest links of time or space, 
We never knew them fail to wend 
Quite to eternity's hither end. 

For women, uglier than Gorgons, 
We manufacture beauty's organs, 
And give them splendid shapes and faces 
Which might be envied by the Graces. 

the simple assertion, which we will maintain pugnis el caU 
■cihus, that, as to the craniology of reptiles and insects we are 
out of sight above the utmost stretch of whatsoever these 
superb philosophers could possibly comprehend. 



24 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

Pimples like pepper pods, warts like squashes, 
Vanish before our beauty washes ;* 
By help of corsets, stays and boddices, 
We transform dowdies into goddesses.f 

* Vanish before our beauty washes. 

Mr Mackenzie, author oi Jive thousand receipts, &c., de- 
serves to be trounced and anathematized for the following 
vulgar sentence : 

" To set oflF the complexion with all the advantage it can 
attain, nothing more is necessary than to wash the face with 
pure water, or if anything farther be occasionally wanted, it 
IS only the addition of a little soap." 

t We transform dowdies into goddesses. 

We here quote a passage from a popular writer merely to 
indicate our utter disapprobation of the author and of his 
sentiments : 

" The solicitude of parents, especially'' of mothers to make 
their daughters fine ladies is truly ridiculous. How often 
soever the poor child has occasion to look at anything below 
the parallel of the horizon, and a little relax the muscles of 
the neck, it can hardly ever escape the notice of her mamma 
or her governess, and she is bid with more than common 
poignancy of expression, to hold up her head, perhaps more 
than a thousand times in a day. If one of her shoulders 
should be thought to rise but an hair's breadth higher than 
the other, she is immediately bound and braced, twisted and 
screwed, in a most unmerciful manner, and tortured almost 
to death, in order to correct the supposed irregularity. And 
lest the dear creature, in the natural play and free use of her 
limbs, should contract any ungenteel habits, the dancing 
master must be called in at least three times a week to put 
every part of the body into its due place and attitude, and 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 25 

Nice ladies' minds we manufacture, 
Cast in a mould without a fracture, 
And sell the precious things in lots, 
An art we learn'd of Doctor Watts. 

And o'er the shop where these are made, 

In nine inch letters is portray'd, 

Fine female faculties form'd and furnished, 

With genteel educations burnished. 

This shop supplies the place, no doubt, 
Of seminaries taik'd about. 
But never put in operation, 
Fitted for female education.* 

We fabricate spruce dandy noddies, 
With souls adapted to their bodies, 

teach her to sit, stand and walk according to the exact rules 
of his art, which, to be sure, must infinitely exceed all the 
simplicity of untutored nature. Should the least pimple 
appear on any part of the face, or what is still more alarming, 
should the milk-maid's flush begin to betray itself in the 
color of the cheeks, all possible means must be used, physic 
and diet must do their part, nay, health itself must be endan- 
gered or destroyed to suppress the Vulgar complexion. 

" Health and beauty have been frequently destroyed by a 
solicitous care to preserve them, deformity induced, and a 
thousand ill habits contracted by the very means that were 
intended to prevent them." — Ash's Sentiments on Education. 

* See additional note No. 1, at the end of the volume. 



96 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION^ 

To wit so exquisitely small 

They might as well have none at all.* 

* They might as well have none at all. 
The process by which this fabrication is effected is copied 
from Nature ; and her manipulations in similar performances 
hare been thus described in some of our heretofore publica- 
tions : 

Certain sages learn 'd and twistical, 
By reasoning not a whit sophistical, 
Have proved what's wonderful, to wit, 
The smallest atom may be split, 
Then split again, ad infinitum ; 
And diagrams, which much delight 'em, 
By Mr Martin make this out 
Beyond the shadoW of a doubt. 
Matter thus splittable, I wean. 
With half an eye it may be seen, 
That spirit, being much diviner, 
May be proportionably finer ; 
Nor is this merely postulatum, 
'Tis proved by facts, and thus I state them. 

Dame Nature erst, in mood of merriment, 
Perform'd the following odd experiment ; 
She took a most diminish'd sprite, 
Smaller than microscopic mite, 
An hundred thousand such might lie 
Wedged in a cambric needle's eye, 
And first, by dint of her divinity, 
Divided that one whole infinity, 
Then cull'd the very smallest particle. 
And shaped therefrom that worthless article, 
That tiny evanescent dole, 
Which serves for Dicky Dapper's soul. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION* 27 

When we discern an abstraet right, 
We press it ever main and might ; 
Hold all correct, which suits our fancies, 
And never yield to circumstances. 

We cannot brook the serpentine, 
Our march is onward, one straight line, 
Nor flood nor fire impedes our way, 
Lickitacut — devil to pay ! 

We prompt or sanction all procedures 

Of Slavery-Abolition-Leaders, 

Who " go ahead" with more display 

Than a whirlwind's march o'er a dusty way* 

Though southern blacks, to all appearances, 
Are injured by our interferences, 
Still right is right, your most obedient 
Cares not a fig about th' expedient. 

Let loose the blacks at any rate, 
Without delay, without debate, 
Their clanging chains asunder snap 
Suddenly as by thunder clap. 

Huzza then, for amalgamation 

To change our " dough-faced population,'^ 



20 TERRIBLE TRACTORATIOI*, 

In course of one more generation, 
To a nice copper-color'd nation. 

Reader it may be you're a lady, 
Fair as the blush of morn in May day, — ■ 
And not much smitten with our plan 
Of union with a color'd man. 

Bah ! bah ! my dear, I tell you this is 
The silliest of prejudices ; 
Cupid will duly elevate him. 
And Hymen will amalgamate him. 

Thus one Othello was, you know, 
Black as the plumage of a crow, 
And yet the white Miss Desdemona 
Loved him as well as flies love honey, 

The car of Venus, bards have sung, 
Was drawn by doves, when I was young, 
But then, were black birds substituted, 
Ourself for one were better suited. 

We're rather darkish hued ourself, 
Yet will annihilate the elf. 
Who says in earnest, or in jokes 
We're not as good as whiter folks. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 29 

The only color of objection 
To our said tawny predilection 
Is this, 't will ruin the machinery 
Of amatory poets' scenery. 

Bright eyes, pink lips, and cheeks of roses, 
Lily-complexions, Grecian noses, 
Fine necks, and so forth, alabasters. 
No more be themes for poetasters. 

But then the Muse's votary may 
In rhymes like these his fair portray, — 
My Phillis has a natural varnish 
Which time nor accident can't tarnish ; 

No sickly, pale, unripen'd maid, 

" Dyed in the wool," she cannot fade ; 

Essence of ebony and logwood. 

And sweeter than the flowers of dogwood. 

Lives there a bard who would not glory 
In such epistles amatory. 
Possessing that uncommon quality, 
A sprinkling of originality. 

On advocates of colonization 
Shower demi-johns of indignation! — 



30 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

Annihilate the knaves and dolts, 
With Caustic's Patent Thunderbolts ! 

And, be it known, with due civility, 
To our Columbian nobility, 
Fewer black hearts and more black faces 
Would much improve their waning races. 

To lose our jetty population 
Would take the shine from our great nation, 
And make us all like old shoes, lacking 
A coat of Day and Martin's blacking. 

We're glad to find New England beauties 
For black men's rights and white men's duties 
Enlisting their resistless charms. 
For all men yield to ladies' arms. 

Do, dears, make us your generalisimo. 
An all important trust that is, you know, 
And we the hero, who can fill it 
With dazzling glory, if you will it. 

Bostonia's beautiful brigade, 
With Doctor Caustic's flag display'd, 
Suppose you make a general levy 
To swell the columns of your bevy. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 31 

Bright key -stones of the Social Arch, 
Left foot foremost, forward march ! 
Our spunk is up, our prowess ample 
On anti-union rogues to trample. 

Ourself will lead the ladies' army on, 

Charge at its head like Scott's brave Marmion ; 

You fight as angels fought before 

In heaven, so Milton says, of yore. * 

The swart south shivers like a leaf, 
M'Stuffie shoots himself for grief 
At finding all resistance vain, 
As battling with a hurricane. 

We hold in utter execration 

What 's styled the Temperance Reformation, 

To live without good alcohol 

Is tantamount to tol-de-rol ; — 

For nine tenths of our doctors' fees 
From Bacchanalian devotees 
And votaries of Sir Richard Rum 
Have ever, and will ever come. 

Incipient inebriation 
From vmous alcoholization 



32 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

Is indispensable now-a-days 
To make our patriotism blaze. 

Dinner harangues would be so so, 
Stump oratory would not go 
If wine and whiskey did not aid 
The speech ifymg and parade. 

And where 's the patriot, who boasts 
Of excellent cold water toasts ? 
If such things were, and had some merit, 
They must be destitute of spirit. 

If Temperance should turn the scale, 
And total abstinence prevail, 
Rhyme-mongers would be flatter still, 
A million lines, not worth a mill. 

Lord Byron's verse, so highly prized, 
Had fail'd to be immortalized. 
Unless the noble bard had been 
Exalted on the wings of gin. 

As to Anacreontic lays, 
A Moore could make no more displays. 
Ay, Thomas Moore could never more 
Make Bacchanalians shout encore. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 33 

If Temperance chaps wont suffer wine 
Nor gin t' inspire t!ic maudlin nine, 
Some verse by critics dubb'd divine 
Will seem almost as flat as mine. 

Horace says dulce est desipere,^ 

Drink till your way home 's rather slippery, 

But don't indulge in gross ebriety, 

Save in the very best society. 

The lower orders too, we think, 
Unless addicted to strong drink, 
Might rise to riches and renown, 
Thus turn society up side down. 

Let paupers, therefore, swig away. 
With gin and whiskey soak their clay, 
For beggars, somebody says or sings. 
When drunk as lords are rich as kings. 

And if by temperance and frugality, 
Shoe binding should be changed to quality, 

* Horace says, dulce est desipere. 

The stanza with which this line commences, is a liberal, 
but so far as respects meaning, a faithful translation of the 
famous maxim, 'Dulce est desipere in loco. — Horace L. iv. 
C. 12. 

3 



34 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

The mounting mobocratic masses 
May over-top us upper classes. 

The readiest way to keep them down 
Is this, give every jade and clown 
" Lots" of intoxicating stuff, 
Gin, whiskey, and new rum enough ; 

And in that case, I 'il bet my eyes, 
The rogues will never, never rise ; 
Though placed in heaven, they could not fail 
To be Sir Richard Rum's canaille. 

If ardent spirit is not handy. 

Cider's almost as good as brandy, 

And strong beer serves to drench one's dust, 

And keep alive the drunkaVd's thirst. 

There's nothing like intoxication 
To thin off extra population, 
And keep it at respectful distance 
Behind the means of man's subsistence. 

By your good leave, I question whether 
War, famine, pestilence, together, 
Could fill, of alcohol, the place, 
In doctoring off the human race. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 35 

Then, paltry pauper, swig away, 
With gin and whiskey soak your clay, 
Till you Ve diluted it to mortar, 
A filthy mass of mud and water. 

Drink till th' experiment you make 
Of how much liquid fire 't will take 
To make a drunkard burn like tinder, 
And change a nuisance to a cinder. ^ 

The devil, as Milton represented. 

Gunpowder, long ago invented ; 

But genius always finds its level. 

And man, of course, has beaten the devil. 

The wight, virho alcohol found out, 
Surpass'd the fiend, beyond a doubt ; 
He, therefore, merits more renown, 
And ought to wear a hotter crown. 

We live on vegetable diet, 
And will not let a man be quiet, 
Unless the evidence is ample 
That he is copying our example. 

Though brother Graham, it is said, 
Stuffs christians with unbolted bread, 



36 TERRIBLE TRACTORATIOX, 

Our belly timber, quite as good, 
Is made of any kind of wood.* 

You know the commou farmer takes 
His white oak wood for fencing stakes. 
But Lady Caustic fits in style, 
Superior white oak steaks, to broil. 

She 's famous, too, for white oak cheese. 
Harder than granite, ten degrees ; 
So hard that we 're obliged to take it 
To some trip-hammer works to break it. - 

Good hemlock bark philosophized 
In soup, by epicures is prized, 

* Is made of any kind of wood. 

The hint for this improvement was derived from an article 
in the American Farmer, from which the following is ex- 
tracted : 

" A few weeks since, two of the members of the United 
Society of Shakers, at Lebanon, N. Y., were at our office. 
They informed us that they had tried an experiment in feed- 
ing hogs with saw dust, produced in their button and other 
wooden ware factory, by mixing with the usual food, in the 
proportion of one third ; that is, two parts of the usual food 
and one part of saw dust ; and that the hogs thrive full as 
well as when fed in the usual way. From their experiments 
they are satisfied that the saw-dust was digested by the 
animals, was nutritious, and answered in all respects the 
purposes of the usual food." 



TERRIBLE TR ACTORATION. 37 

A paste of button-wood, quoth I, 
Is cap-a-pie to cap a pie. 

A stick of bass-wood, being bevill'd 

By gastronomic art bedevil I'd, 

Or served as Welchmen cook their cheese, 

A man of taste will always please. 

From saw dust, bran and pebble stones, 
And quantum suff. of pounded bones, 
We form the most delicious dishes 
That e'er indulged the gourmand's wishes. 

When our great plans are brought to pass, 
Mankind en masse may go to grass ; 
And every rover, will moreover. 
Enjoy his lot like pig in clover. 

We next crave liberty to mention 
Another wonderful invention ; 
A sort of stenographic still. 
Alias a Patent Authors mill. 

We fill its hopper with a set 
Of letters of the alphabet, 
And turn out eulogies, orations. 
Or themes for July celebrations, — 



38 TERRIBLE TRACT0RATI05* 

News, both domestic and extraneous, 
Essays, and extracts miscellaneoas, 
We manufacture by the means 
Of said superlative machines* 

This last invention also reaches 
To making Congress members' speeches ; 
Would they adopt it, though we Ve said it, 
T' would cent per cent enhance their credit* 

We hammerM out a lawyer's jaw mill^ 
Which went by water like a saw-mill 
With so much clamor^ fire and fury,, 
It thunderstruck the judge and jury* 

A syllogism, which embraces 

AH knotty, complicated cases. 

We fabricated and applied 

To every cause which could be tried* 

Oft have I quenchM man's vital spark i 
" The souFs old cottage," cold and dark^ 
Again, in spite of death, our grand ill, 
Illumed as one would light a candle.* 

♦ Illumed as one would light a candle. 

In my younger days, I lived on terms of intimacy witii 
Doctor Franklin, highly honorable to both parties, as it 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 39 

Display'd a mode in Latin thesis 
To pick the human frame to pieces ; 

showed we were both men of discernment in choosing each 
a great man for his friend. 

In a letter from that venerable sage, afterwards printed 
{See Franklin's Works, p. 115, vol. ii. third edition) he told 
me that toads buried in sand, shut up in hollow trees, &c. 
would live forever, as it were ; and, among other things, 
informed me of certain curious facts about flies, which I will 
relate in his own words. " I have seen an instance of com- 
mon flies preserved in a manner somewhat similar. They 
had been drowned in Madeira wine, apparently about the 
time when it was bottled in Virginia, to be sent to London. 
At the opening of one of the bottles, at the house of a friend 
where I was, three drowned flies fell into the first glass 
which was filled. Having heard it remarked that drowned 
flies were capable of being revived by the rays of the sun, I 
proposed making the experiment upon these. They were 
therefore exposed to the sun upon a sieve, which had been 
employed to strain them out of the wine. In less than three 
hours two of them began by degrees to recover life. They 
commenced by some convulsive motions of the thighs, and 
at length they raised themselves upon their legs, wiped their 
eyes with their fore feet, beat and brushed their wings with 
their hind feet, and soon after began to fly, finding them- 
selves in Old England, without knowing how they came 
thither. The third continued lifeless until sun-set, when, 
losing all hopes of him, he was thrown away. 

" I wish it were possible, from this instance, to invent a 
method of embalming drowned persons, in such a manner 
that they might be recalled to life, at any period, however 
distant ; for having a very ardent desire to see and observe 
the state of America a hundred years hence, I should prefer 
to an ordinary death, the being immersed in a cask of Madeira 



40 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

The parts deposit by themselves, 
Like mineral specimens on shelves ; — 

And having scour'd off every particle 
Which clogg'd the motions of the article, 
The vital functions to restore 
To healthier action than before.* 

wine, with a few friends, until that time, then to be recalled 
to life by the solar warmth of my dear country. But since, 
in all probability, we live in an age too early, and too near 
the infancy of science, to see such an art brought, in our time, 
to perfeetion, I must, for the present, content myself with 
the treat which you are so kind as to promise me, of the res- 
urrection of a fowl or turkey cock." 

* To healthier action than before. 

I do not arrogate to myself the whole merit of this noble 
invention. Dr Price and Mr Godwin, in divers elaborate 
works, especially the latter, in his PoliticalJnstice, suggested 
some ideas which set my ingenuity in such a ferment, that I 
could not rest quietly till I had brewed a sublime treatise on 
the best mode of pulling down, repairing, and rebuilding 
decayed and worn out animal machines. 

I shall not attempt, in this place, to oblige your worships 
with anything like a table of the contents of this judicious 
and profound performance. I will, however, gratify your 
curiosity so far as to glance cursorily at a few of the leading 
topics therein discussed and illustrated, and slightly mention 
some of the immense advantages which will be the result of 
this discovery. 

In the first place, I make it apparent, by a long series of 
experiments and scientific deductions, drawn therefrom, that 
it is very practicable to enlighten the mind of a stupid fellow, 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 41 

Thus, brother Ovid said or sung once, 

The Gods of old folks could make young ones* 

by battering, boring, or pulling his body to pieces. — Mr poet 
Waller's authority is here to my purpose, who tells us, that 

•* The soul's dark cottage battered and decay'd, 

" Lets in new light through chinks which time has made." 

Mr Gray, likewise, in his Hymn to Adversity, requests 
that " Daughter of Jove" to impose g-ently her " iron hand," 
and trouble him a little with her " torturing hour," although 
he appears disposed to avoid, if possible, her more dismal 
accompaniments, such as her " Gorgonic frown," and the 
" funereal cry of horror." 

The Spaniards, under Cortes and Pizarro, managed much 
in the same way, and enlightened the natives of the mighty 



* The gods of old folks could make young ones. 

Stricto Medea recludit 

Ense senis jugulum : veteremque exire cruorem 
Passa, replet succis. Quos postquam combibit ^son 
Aut ore acceptos, aut vulnere barda, comaeque 
Canitie posita nigrum rapuere colorem. 
Pulsa fugit macies. 

This passage, with a condensation of thought and felicity 
of expression peculiar to myself, I have thus happily hit into 
English. 

Medea cut the wither'd weasand 

Of superannuated jEson, 

Then fill'd him with the acrid juices 

Of nettle-tops and flower-de-luces ; 

Till from the defunct carcase, lo ! 

Starts a full blooded Bond street beau ! ! 



42 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

By process, not one whit acuter, 

Than making new pots from old pewter. 

empires of Peru and Mexico in the great truths of Chris- 
tianity, by killing'a part, reducing the remainder to a state of 
servitude, and battering their souls' cottages at their leisure. 
This process is in part expressed in a poetical epistle, which 
I received not long since irom my correspondent settled at 
Terra del Fuego, in South America, who thus expresses the 
conduct of some of his acquaintance, in converting the abori- 
gines to Christianity. 

Good folks to America came 

To curtail old Satan's dominions ; 
The natives, the more to their shame. 

Stuck fast to their ancient opinions. 

Till a method the pious men find. 

Which ne'er had occur'd to your dull wits. 

Of making sky -lights to the mind, 
By boring the body with bullets. 

Like Waller, with process so droll, 
To illume an old clod-pated noddy ; 

They thought they might burnish the soulj 
By beating a hole in the body. 

I have read of a great mathematician, who was uncom* 
toonly stupid till about the age of twenty, when he acciden- 
tally pitched head first into a deep well, fractured his skull, 
and it became necessary to trepan him. After the operation 
it was immediately evident that his wit was much improved, 
and he soon became a prodigy of intellect. Whether this 
alteration was caused by " new light let in through chinks," 
the trapanning chisel had made, or whether the texture and 
position of the brain were materially changed for the better 
in consequence of the jar and contusion of the fall, I shall 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 43 

So famed Aldini, erst in France, 

Led dead folks down a country-dance, 

leave to some future Lavater, or any other gentleman, who 
can gttage the capacity of a statesman, or a barrel of porter, 
with equal facility, to determine. 

2d. I proceed to demonstrate, that man being, as our most 
enlightened modern philosophers allow, jumbled together by 
mere chance (a blindj capricious goddess, who, half her time, 
does not know what she is aboilt) it is extremely easy to un- 
derstand the principles of his texture ; because the mechan- 
ism of his frame is less intricate than that of a common 
spit jack. Consequently, a Solomon or a Brodum can mend 
this machine when deranged, as well as a HarVey, a Syden- 
ham, or a Mead. 

3d. I proceed to prove, from analogy, with what facility 
this machine may be disjointed, pulled to pieces, and again 
botched together. My friend Mahomet had his heart taken 
out, a drop of black blood expressed therefrom, and went 
about his common concerns next day as well as ever. So 
when a sighing sWain is taken desperately in love, he may 
lose all his insides without any Very serious inconvenience. 
This I can attest from sad experience , as, about forty ^^ears 
since, I was terribly in for't, with a sweet little sprig of 
divinity, whose elbow was ever her most prominent feature^ 
whenever I had the audacity to attempt to approximate the 
shrine of her Goddesship. 

4th. The important advantages, which will undoubtedly 
arise from this invention, are almost too obvious to require 
explanation. I shall, however, advert to a few. 

By taking the animal machine to pieces, you may divest 
it of such particles as clog its wheels, and render its motions 
less perfect. A decayed, worn-out gallant may have its parts 
separated, thoroughly burnished, botched together, and ren- 
dered as bright as a new-coined silver sixpence. Thus my 



44 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION 

And made them rigadoon and chasse 
As well as when alive, I dare say ! 

And I once ofFer'd, very prettily, 

To patch up Frenchmen kill'd in Italy, 

Though shot, or stabb'd, or hack'd with fell blows, 

As wives patch coats when out at elbows! 

venerable Piccadilly friend, who, as Darwin expres<!es it, 
sometimes " clasps a beauty in Platonic arms ;" if he 
should, fifty years hence, perceive that the mechanism of his 
frame is rather the worse for wear, may come to Dr Caustic, 
and be rebuilt into as fine a young buck as any in Christen- 
dom. 

5th. Hereditary diseases may be thus culled from the con- 
stitution, and gouty and other deleterious particles separated 
from those which are sound and healthful. 

Pride may be picked from the composition of an upstart 
mushroom of a nobleman, impudence from a quack, knavery 
from a lawyer, moroseness from a methodist, testiness from 
an old bachelor, peevishness from an old maid ; in short, 
mankind altered from what they are to what they ought to 
be, by a method at once cheap, practicable, easy and expe- 
ditious. 

The only difficulty which has ever opposed itself to my 
carrying this sublime invention to the highest possible pitch 
of perfection, has been the almost utter impossibility of pro- 
curing any man, woman, or child, who is willing to become 
the subject of operation. Now if either of your worships 
would loan me his carcase to be picked to pieces, and again 
botched together in the manner above stated, provided the 
experiment should not fully succeed, I will engage to pay 
all the damages thereby accruing to community, out of one 
tenth part of the profits of this publication. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 45 

Profoundly versed in chymic science, 

I could bid matter's law defiance ; 

Was up to nature, or beyond her, 

In mimic earthquakes, rain, and thunder!* 

* la mimic earthquakes, rain, and thunder! 

Chymistry furnishes us with a method of manufacturing 
artificial earthquakes, which will have all the great effects 
of those that are natural. The old-fashioned receipt for an 
earthquake, however, of iron filings and sulphur mixed in 
certain proportions and immersed in the earth, I shall not 
take the trouble to state to your worships ; as most of you 
have, perhaps, read Mr Martin's Philosophy nearly half 
through. But my plan is to make such an earthquake as 
no mortal, except Dr Darwin and myself, ever supposed pos- 
sible. The former gentleman made shift to.explode the moon 
from the southern hemisphere of our earth, and I propose to 
forward other moons by artificial earthquakes of my own 
invention, from the northern hemisphere. I will give your 
worships a specimen of Dr Darwin's moon-producing 
earthquake, from " Botanic Garden," Canto I. 

" Gnomes ! How you shriek'd ! when through the troubled air, 

Roar'd the fierce din of elemental war ; 

When rose the continents, and sunk the main, 

And earth's huge sphere exploding burst in twain. — 

Gnomes ! How you gazed ! When from her wounded side. 

Where now the South sea heaves its waste of tide, 

Rose on swift wheels the Moon's refulgent car. 

Circling the solar orb, a sister star, 

Dimpled with vales, with shining hills emboss'd, 

And roU'd round earth her airless realms of frost." 



46 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

And by a shock of electricity, 

(I tell the truth without duplicity) 

I did (what won't again be soon done) 

E'en fairly knock the man in the moon down !* 

No man will say in this case, — 

ParturiuRit montes nascetur ridiculus mns. 
The reaction, at the moment of explosion, of that mass of 
matter which now composes our moon, is the cause of the 
obliquity of the polar axis to the poles of the ecliptic, accord- 
ing to Dr Darwin ; though Milton says, 

« Angels turn'd askance 



The poles of earth twice ten degrees and more : 
From the sun's axle, they with labor push'd 
Oblique the centric globe." — 

Whether an explosion similar to that, so beautifully described 
by Dr Darwin, from the north side of the equator, would not 
set all right, and a new era be announced, which will be, 
like that of old, when 

*' Spring 



Perpetual smiled on earth, with vernal flowers, 
Equal in days and nights"-; 

is a problem worth the attention of our modern philosophers. 
But at any rate, I, Dr Caustic, will positively try the experi- 
ment. 

* E'en fairly knock the man in the moon down ! 

This notable exploit I think to be a very great improve- 
ment on electrical experiments made by a number of renown- 
ed French and English philosophers. See Priestly's History 
of Electricity, page 94. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 47 



On ocean's bottom we can travel, 
Thorough mud and thorough gravel ; 
While over head hoarse tempests hurtle 
With more adroitness than a turtle. 



Priestly first caused our head to teem 

With this most eligible scheme, 

Supplied us vital air, which stuff • 

W^e took like macaroni snufF.* 

Encamp'd beneath a huge ice island. 

For nineteen years we did n't come nigh land, 

And could have staid, as well as not, 

E'en had the sea been boiling hot. 

In car triumphant, drawn by whales. 
Tackled to their tremendous tails, 
We rode sublime, and claim'd a right 
To everything which hove in sight. 

* We took like macaroni snuff. 

Dr Darwin alludes to this wonderful performance in the 
following superb lines : 

" Led by the sage, lo ! Britain's sons shall guide 
Huge SEA-BALLOONS beneath the tossing tide ; 
The diving castles roof'd with spheric glass, 
Ribb'd with strong oak, and barr'd with bolts of brass, 
Buoy'd with pure air shall endless tracts pursue, 
And Priestley's hand the vital flood renew." 

Botanic Garden, Canto iv. 



48 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

Old Neptune's realm, 't is our intent, 
To make a Yankee-settlement, 
And if Britannia interferes* 
We'll twist her ugly lion's ears. 

An Iceland burning mountain's gorge 
We metamorphos'd to a forge, 
And made therein as many as 
Ten thousand tons of solid gas. 

* And if Britannia interferes. 

That Great Britian, not content with domineering on the 
surface, contemplates the colonizing of the depths of the 
ocean, is evident from the following lines, by Dr Darwin : 

" Then shall Britannia rule the wealthy realms, 
Which ocean's wide insatiate wave o'erwhelms ; 
Confine in netted bowers his scaly flocks, 
Part his blue plains, and people all his rocks. 
Deep in warm waves, beneath the line that roll, 
Beneath the shadowy ice-isles of the pole, 
Onward, through bright meandering vales afar. 
Obedient sharks* shall trail her sceptred car. 
With harness'd necks the pearly flood disturb. 
Stretch the silk rein, and champ the silver curb." 

But be it known by these presents to Britannia's ladyship, 
that all that part of the ocean, which lies between the centre 
of gravity and six feel of the surface, including whatsoever 
salt water touches or rests upon, belongs to Doctor Caustic, 
by the rights of discovery and pre-occupation. 

* We preferred whales both for the docility and the rhyme'^ 
sake. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION, 49 

This we can let off at our leisure, 

Like Shakspeare's conjurer, wield at pleasure 

The explosive elements of thunder, 

With power to rive the globe asunder. 

And if the theory of Babbage* 
Is worth a single head of cabbage, 

* And if the theory of Babbage, &c. 

Charles Babbage, Esq. A. M., Lucasian Professor of Math- 
ematics in the University of Cambridge, [Eng.] and mem- 
ber of several academies, has written and published a work 
On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, which 
furnished that impulse to our Organ of Constructiveness 
which eventuated in the accomplishment of the solid gas 
manufactory above alluded to. 

" In Iceland the sources of heat [to wit, hot springs, vol- 
canoes, &c.] and their proximity seem almost to point out the 
future destiny of that island. The use of its glaciers may 
enable its inhabitants to liquefy the gases with the least 
expenditure of mechanical force ; and the heat of its volca- 
noes may supply the power necessary for their condensation. 
Thus, in a future age, power may become the staple com- 
modity of the Icelanders, and of the inhabitants of other 
volcanic districts ; and possibly the very process by which 
they will procure this article of exchange for the luxuries of 
happier climates, may, in some measure tame, the tremendous 
element which occasionally devastates this province." 

By our improvement, after the gases are condensed into a 
liquid, they are made solid by the total abstraction therefrom 
of every particle of caloric, insomuch that a thermometer, 
of our invention, with its bulb in a ball of gas, indicated 999 
degrees below of Fahrenheit. 
4 



50 TERRIBLE TRACTORA.TION. 

This grand plenipotent gas of ours 
Will supersede all moving powers. 

With this wiil drive aerial cars, 
Send hourly coaches to the stars, 
A lightning opposition line 
Would be a snail compared to mine. 

We seized the moon, by mickle strength. 
And brought her down, within arm's length, — 
And made her, under our protection, 
Submit to critical inspection. 

Her Natural History and Topography, 
With plates of Pendleton's lithography. 
We mean to print and publish soon. 
And call it Mirror of the Moon. 

Like us, was never man besides 
To calculate aerial tides ; 
Though Volney undertook to do it 
He wanted science to go through it.* 

* He wanted science to go through it. 

Monsieur Citizen Volney, a sort of minor doctor Caustic, 
published a circular letter, requesting the co-operation of 
men of similar views and intellects with his own, to make 
obserrations on the course and velocity of the winds, the 
times of their occurrence, &c. in different parts of the globe. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 5l 

But we can let your worships know 
Which way, next year the wind will blow, 
And indicate without verbosity, 
The measure of its mean velocity. 

We gagg'd sage Darwin's polar bear, 
And would not let him " vomit air ;"* 

The results of these observations he wished might lie for- 
warded to him at Paris, that he might therefrom be able to 
complete a theory, which he had partly formed for calculating 
the tides and currents of the atmosphere, with as much pre- 
cision as those of the ocean are now predicted. 

Dr Franklin's theories relative to this subject also deserve 
the meed of metrical immortality. His tropical hurricanes, 
caused by a whirling precipitance of cold air from the upper 
to the lower region of the atmosphere are very fine phenom- 
ena. His north eas^storms, which, on our continent, begin 
their operations at the southwest, inconsequence of some ex- 
tra rarefaction of air somewhere on or about the isthmus of 
Darien, deserve a minute inspection. The ascent of rarefied 
air at the equator, which makes its way to the poles, and visits 
us in the form of a frigorific north-wester, as explained by 
Dr Darwin, requires your worship's high consideration- But 
we do not believe it possible by a single impulse to project 
all this philosophy into your right worshipful's pericrania. 
You will, therefore, please wait till we have leisure for the 
operation. 

* And would not let him " vomit air." 

This terrible bear is likewise a camelion, and also a dra- 
gon. But here you have him — 



52 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

Thus spoil'd the Boreal ventilator, 
And made a vacuum at the equator. 

And then, by Doctor Priestley's aid, 
A vital atmosphere was made, 

'' Castled on ice, beneath the circling bear, 
A vast cAMELioN dtinks and vomits air ; 
O'er twelve degrees his ribs gigantic bend, 
And many a league his gasping jaws extend ; 
Half Jsh beneath, his scaly volutes spread, 
And vegetable plumage crests his head, 
Huge fields of air his wrinkled skin receives, 
From panting gills, wide lungs, and toaving leaves ;* 
Then with dread throes subsides his bloated form, 
His shriek the thunder, and his sigh the storm." 

Botanic Garden. 

And again in prose. 

" Though the immediate cause of the destruction or repro- 
duction of great masses of air, at certain times when the 
wind changes from north to south, or from south to north, 
cannot yet be ascertained ; yet as there appears greater dif- 
ficulty in accounting for this change of wind from any other 
known causes, we may still suspect that there exists in the 
arctic and antarctic circles, a bear or dragon, yet unknown 
to philosophers, which, at times, suddenly drinks up, and at 
other times as suddenly vomits out, one fifteenth part of the 
atmosphere : and hope that this or some future age will 
learn how to govern and domesticate a monster which might 
be rendered of such important service to mankind" ! ! ! 

Botanic Garden. Note XXXIII. 

* "Divine Nonsensia." 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 53 

And stretch'd abroad, and found to answer, 
From Capricorn quite on to Cancer. 

We set an air balloon in motion 
To float on th' atmospheric ocean, 
Annex'd a log, which never fail'd. 
To give the distance which it sail'd : 

And form'd a rudder, I assure it ye, 
By which we steer'd with great security, 
And could make good our destination 
To any harbor in creation. 

And we had nineteen pair of oars, 
All mann'd with philosophic rowers, 
Could therefore sail without a breeze. 
Or stem a hurricane with ease.* 

* Or stem a hurricane with ease. 

" Many schemes" (it is said in Rees's Cyclopaedia, article 
Aerostation) " have been proposed for directing the horizon- 
tal motion of balloons. Some have thought of annexing 
sails to a balloon, in order to give it the advantage of the 
wind ; but to this proposal it has been objected, that as the 
aerostatic machines are at rest with respect to the air that 
surrounds them, they feel no wind, and consequently can 
derive no benefit from the sails." None but a conjurer, how- 
ever, could have made that discovery. But Dr Rees says 
further, that " An ingenious writer observes, that the case of 
vessels at sea is quite different from that of balloons ; be- 



54 TERRIBLE TRACTORATIOJS^* 

We now make public our intention 
By aid of said superb invention, 
To send a well arm'd air balloon 
To take and colonize the moon. 

A most inveterate believer 
In foreign source of yellow fever, 
We say his sconce must be fuliginous, 
Who holds that plague to be indigenous. 

cause that the former move with a velocity incomparably" 
Jess than that of the wind impelling them, on account of the 
resistance of the water," &c. This ingenious writer must 
have had a new edition of Friar Bacon's head on his shoul- 
ders. 

Our mode of steering a balloon is an improvement on the 
invention of Professor Danzel, which is thus described by Dr 
Rees. "Professor Danzel has constructed two cylinders, or 
axles, to the ends of which are fixed, in the form of a cross, 
four sails or oars, moveable at the point of their insertion in 
the c^'lin^ler, in such a manner, that v;^hen made to move 
round by means of a handle, the eight oars, like the cogs of 
a water mill wheel, present, successively, sometimes their 
flat side and sometimes their edge," &c. 

It is very possible that you may have heard of some of 
our American mechanical geniuses, who have sometimes come 
renj nigh to the art of navigating boats against the stream 
by the force of the current. But our invention is very mate- 
rially different from that. We manage much like a crab or 
lobster that paddles himself forward under water, and pro- 
ceeds as well as if be actually carried sail. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 55 

As to th' extent of its dominion 
We '11 give our medical opinion ; 
When next we greet your worships, please 
To give security for fees. 

This dire disorder is contagious 
And its contagion is outrageous,* 
'Twill rage like wild-fire, anywhere, 
On dryest soil, in purest air. 

* And its contagion is outrageous. 

' Some people, who appear to be fond of an opportunity of 
spoiling a beautiful theory, have produced against contagion 
the following arguments, and thereby very much perplexed 
a simple subject which ought to have been decided solely 
by the ipse dixit of some famous personage of the faculty. 

1 . The disorder is propagated more rapidly than could 
be possible on the theory of contagion ; as it spreads over 
a large city quicker than the small pox would pervade a 
single alley. 

2. It assimilates to itself all other diseases, and forces 
them to wear its livery ; which never is the case in conta- 
gious disorders. 

3. It is destroyed by frost ; but frost increases the activi- 
ty of contagion. 

4. It is an endemic, and must have its own local at- 
mosphere, beyond whose limits it cannot be communicated. 
Thus the attendants of the sick in country hospitals are 
never known to be infected. 

These, and fifty other arguments of a similar nature, 1 
overturn by the weight of the authority of Dr Mead and 
other great men, which I have found to be a concise and 
<ionclusive way of stopping the mouths of my opponents. 



56 TERRIBLE rfRlCTORATlOlt. 

It is an animalcule, which 
Is propagated like the itch, — ■ 
Communicated like small pox, 
But can't be bred in dirty docks. 

From patient's breath an emanation^ 
By contact or approximation 
It may, as learned men have stated, 
Be everywhere disseminated. 

From friends infected, children, wives, 
Let all men scamper then, for lives ; 
The wretches shun like Charon's ferry, 
And leave the dead themselves to bury. 

T is true some simpletons have said 
A kind of fever may be bred 
By heat conjoin'd with putrefaction, 
Which suits contagionists to a fraction. 

They tell you, if these causes may 

Produce the plague in Africa, 

It would, to common sense, appeaf 

Thiey might effect the fever here. 

\ 

That true philosophy expects 
From all like causes like effects / 
For Nature never play'd a prank 
To cheat us, like a mountebank. 



a'ERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 57 

But these dull dolts don't understand 
That in « Columbia's happy land," 
Nature, for sake of *< Freedom's cause," 
Will set aside her general laws. 

Said yellow fever can endure 
Nothing offensive or impure^ 
Bad water or mephitic air 
Or dead cats in a thoroughfare. 

Therefore, good cits, in sultry weather* 
Collect your dirtiness together, 
And then contrive to lodge it pretty 
Nigh to the centre of the city. 

The fever, meeting such a mound, 
Will turn about and quit the ground, 
And leave the fortunate dirt-protected 
Inhabitants, quite uninfected. 

Filth, on earth's surface, it is clear, 
Its like attracts from th' atmosphere. 
And always leaves a pure vicinity, 
By laws of chemical affinity.*' 

* By laws of chemical affinity; 

Many an elaborate argument, founded on the above philo- 
sophical proposition has been bandied about in periodical 



38 TERRIBLE TRACTORATIOrf. 

Our citizens, their next resource 

Should cause a " social intercourse," 

By perforating banks and bounds 

*Twixt vaults and wells and burying-grounds^ 

For such good management ensures 
Against expense in digging sewers ; 
Because a well, 'tis very plain. 
Serve all its neighborhood for a drain. 

These things accomplish'd 't will be very 
Correct their relatives to bury 
Scarce under ground, in the most populous 
And busy part of the metropolis. 

For 't would be decorous, at least, 
In memory of the dear deceased. 
At once to answer two good ends, 
To drink to and to drink our friends. 

Thus Artemisia, 't was I thinkj 
Made her dead husband diet drink, 

prints and journals, during sundry desperate disputes rela- 
tive to the origin of llie American plague. Madrid and Ed- 
inburgh, it is affirmed, are rendered healthy by a want of 
cleanliness, which is proverbial. This sound reasoning is 
made the basis of our judicious presciiplions which adorn 
this and several consecutive stanzas* 



fERRIBLE TRACTORATION* 59 

And thereby, probably enough, 

Saved gallipots of doctor's stuff. * 

Proceed to scoop each populous place hi 
To something very like a basin, 
And let the centre of your mart 
Be on or near the lowest part. 

Well, after all these things are finish'dj 
Let no man's efforts be diminish'd, 
But this good maxim keep in view, 
That nought is done if aught 's to do. 

Then fall too, gentlemen, and grub 
Up every root and tree and shrub, 
Each trace of vegetation found 
In town and out, for ten miles round. 

Your « useful labors" to complete 
In every square, side- walk and street^ 
By way of ornament then please 
To set out Bohun Upas trees. 

If after all the fiend we find 
Is not to emigrate inclined, 
But like too many a foreign caitiff 
Declares on oath he is a native, 



60 TERRIBLE TRACTORATLON. 

To counteract him, my advice is 
To tow us down the polar ices, 
And when a field or two is brought us, 
'T will drive him into winter quarters. 

This thing your worship^s well know can 
Be done on Doctor Darwin's plan, 
And 't is the best work, past a doubt. 
Our gun boats can be set about. 



# 



Paulo majora nunc canamus 
And hope the public will not blame us 
If we should soar, ('t is our intention.) 
Above your worship's comprehension. 

We 've form'd the most tremendous plan, 
Which ever stretch'd the mind of man, 
And which to nothing less aspires 
Than making moons from central fires. 

If theories of Doctor Hutton 

Be worth the shadow of a button, 

* Paulo majora nunc canamus. 

Now sweep Apollo's sounding lyre, 
And pitch the psalm an octave highet. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 61 

And Doctor Darwin has not blunder'd, 
We '11 turn out full moons by the hundred* 

* We '11 turn out full moons by the hundred. 

I do not think that one in forty of your worship's has 
ever read the " Theory of the Earth," as first produced by 
James Hutton, M. D., F. R. S., &c, &c. and thereafter much 
improved by professor Playfair. As it would, however, be 
highly commendable for gentlemen of your honorable pro- 
fession not to rest with a superficial view of the great opera- 
tions of nature, I will accompany you as far as the centre of 
gravity, in a journey of observation, for investigating the 
astonishing magazines of burning materials which Dr Hutton 
and professor Playfair have furnished us for the execution of 
our stupendous project. 

1 . You will obligingly take it for granted, or run the risk 
of spoiling the Huttonian Theory, that the centre of the 
globe is a stupendous furnace, a million times hotter than 
that of Nebuchadnezzar. That this same heat, although it 
never amounts to a blaze, and wastes no fuel, is sufficiently 
elastic to raise the continents from the bottom of the main 
— That having once raised or blown them up, as it were, 
like a bladder, it is very careful not to let them down again, 
because as we shall see by and by, they must all be " disin- 
tegrated," alias washed into the ocean. 

9. Moreover, Dr Hutton's followers will thank you to sup- 
pose that all this matter, raised as aforesaid, consisted 
originally of unstratified rocks, which, though they are pro- 
perly called primitive as the most ancient of the whole 
family of rocks, yet they are in fact nothing better than the 
scrapings or " disintegrations" of primal continents which 
existed before the commencement of the last edition of the 
earth. 

3. You will please to believe that all calcareous matters 



62 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

We mean to bore us, at a venture, 

Some auger-holes through Hutton's centre, 

are formed from the detritus of the primitive rocks, delivered 
by rivers into the sea, and there, after having been modified 
by central heat, protruded above water as before mentioned. 

4. You will likewise be convinced that no metal, mineral, 
or lapidose substance, can possibly be formed except at the 
bottom of the ocean, in the laboratory of Dr Hutton.* 

5. That although some foolish people have supposed that 
the sea has been subsiding for centuries, yet, as we know 
that the continents are crumbling into the ocean, you will 
conclude that we shall at length find all our dry land under 
water, and the sea increased in proportion to the square feet 
of earth deposited under its surface. 

6. That it is evident that this central heat, having raised its 
continents, and put proper supporters under them, will go to 
work in due time, and raise new continents from the bottom 
of the ocean. Thus the area of Dr Hutton's centre will be 
enlarged, till the earth and moon will come in contact, if our 
plan hereafter mentioned should not check such progression. 
But we forbear, lest when it is ascertained that " the present 
continents are all going to decay and their materials descend- 
ing into the oceem," it may cause some disagreeable sensa- 
tions among our friends, who are speculators in American 
lands, whose property, it seems, according to Dr Hutton's 
theory, is about to take French leave of its worthy proprie- 
tors. 

* And therefore the writer of the article " Earth,*^ in the Ency- 
clopedia Britannica, is wrong in attempting to overturn this fine 
fabric of philosophy, by making it appear that metals, minerals, fos- 
sils, dec. are continually forming by accretion, &c. on the earth's 
surface. Indeed, that writer has laid a heavy hand on all the theo- 
ries of our modem earthmongers. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 63 

Thus give an unexpected vent 
To Hutton's fires in prison pent. 

We '11 fan his furnace by a pair 

Of bellows made of Franklin's air,* 

For air, (a truth Count Riimford knew well,) 

Contains the very soul of fuel. 

When you have thoroughly saturated your faculties with 
this theory, we will oblige you with a fresh solution from Dr 
Darwin, compounded as follows : 

" The variation of the compass can only be accounted for 
by supposing the central parts of the earth to consist of a 
fluid mass, and that part of this fluid is iron, which requiring 
a greater degree of heat to bring it into fusion than glass or 
other metals, remains a solid ore. The vis inertias of this 
fluid mass with the iron in it occasions it to perform fewer 
revolutions than the crust of solid earth over it ; and thus it 
is gradually left behind, and the place where the floating 
iron resides, is pointed to by the direct or retrograde motion 
of the magnetic needle." 

* Of bellows made of Franklin's air. 

In the first paper of the third volume of Transactions of 
the American Philosophical Society, you will find certain 
" Conjectures concerning the formation of the earth," &c. in 
a letter from Dr B. Franklin, to the abbe Soulavie ; which 
we would prescribe as ionics to Hutton's system. The Ameri- 
can sage informs us, that in the course of some observations 
in Derbyshire, in England, he " imagined that the internal 
part (of the earth) might be a fluid more dense, and of great- 
er specific gravity than any of the solids we are acquainted 



64 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

Then pour in suddenly the ocean 
To add eclat to our explosion ; — 

with ; which, therefore, might swim in or upon that fluid. 
Thus the surface of the globe would be a shell, capable of 
being broken and disordered by anj'^ violent movements of 
the fluid on which it rested. And as air has been compressed 
by art so as to be twice as dense as water, in which case, if 
such air and water could be contained in a strong glass ves- 
sel, the air would be seen to take the lowest place, and the 
water to float above and upon it ;* and as we know not yet 
the degree of density to which air may be compressed ; and 
M. Amontons calculated, that its density increasing as it 
approached the centre in the same proportion as above the 
surface, it would at the depth of — leagues be heavier than 
gold, possibly the dense fluid occupying the internal parts of 
the globe might be air compressed. And as the force of ex- 
pansion in dense air, when heated, is in proportion to its 
density ; this central air Tnight afford another agent to move 
the surface, as well as be of use in keeping alive the subter- 
raneous f res ; thoughj'as you observe, the sudden rarefication 
of water coming into contact with those fires may also be an 
agent sufficiently strong for that purpose, when acting be- 
tween the incumbent earth and the fluid on which it rests. 

" If one might indulge imagination in supposing how such 
a globe was formed, I should conceive, that all the elements 
in separate particles being originally mixed in confusion, and 
occupjing a great space, they would, as soon as the Almighty 
fiat ordained gravity or the mutual attraction of certain parts 
'and the mutual repulsion of other parts to exist, all move 
towards their common centre : That the air being a fluid 
whose parts repel each other, though drawn to the common 

* I am afraid, after all, this would turn out but a bubble. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 65 

Water, your worships know, or may know, 
Adds terribly to a volcano. 

centre by their gravity, v/ould be densest towards the centre 
and rarer as more remote; consequently ail matters lighter 
than the central part of that air and immersed in it, would 
recede from the centre and rise till they arrived at that region 
of the air which was of the same specific gravity with them- 
selves, where they would rest; while other matter, mixed 
with the lighter air would descend, and the two meeting 
wjuld form the shell of the first earth, leaving the upper at- 
mosphere nearly clear.* The original movement of the parts 
towards their common centre, would naturally form a whirl 
there, which would continue in the turning of the new formed 
globe upon its axis, and the greatest diameter of the shell 
would be in its equator. If by any accident afterwards, the 
axis should be changed," [viz. by the impinging of a BuflTon's 
comet's tail or the delivery of a Darwin's moon] " the dense 
internal Jl aid hy altering its form must hurst the shell and 
throw all its substance into the confusion in which we find 
it !" There's an air gun for your worships ! 

Now, if we did not possess a particular partiality for the 
sage who formed this system, we should probably break up 
his Eolian cave, even at the risk of creating half a hundred 
hurricanes. For should we open a vent as large as a needle's 
point into this magazine of compressed air, you would in- 

* Now, if it should happen that the comparative ievity of air 
consists in the repellant powers of its particles, and those bodies 
which have the greatest cohesion are most prone to gravitate, there 
•'needs some conjuror to tell us," what should hinder bodies of 
greater specific gravity from riddling down between those particles of 
air. No man but Dr Franklin could have caught the fugitive air 
under the shell of the first earth, and pressed it till it became heavier 
than gold by a hurly-burly of elements " mixed in confusion.'* 

5 



66 TERRIBLE TRACTORATIOI*. 

Each orifice will then give birth 

To grand satellites of earth, 

Disploded dreadfully, dear me ! 

Like Darwin's moon from southern sea. 

How will the universe admire, 
When my vast bickering globes of fire, 
In grand Darwinian style shall rise. 
Like flying mountains through the skies. 

Though said sublime explosions must 
Destroy good Doctor Burnetts crust,* 

stantlybe assailed by " another g-uess w.'ustling-^^i than was 
tlie tempest tost Trojan fleet when 

Una Eurusque Notusque ruunt creberque procellis. 

* Destroy good doctor Burnet's crust. 

We should be able to make much more rapid progress in 
our sublime flights of poetry, were we not under the neces- 
sity of dismounting from our Pegasus every ten paces, in or- 
der to give your worships a lu;ist, and thus enable your 
ponderosities, like Mr Pope's " slugs," to keep up with us. 
It is a thousand to one if any one of your college has ever 
heard of Dr Burnet, of earth-manufacturing memory. But 
it IS absolutely necessary that you should know something of 
Dr Burnet's theory before you can comprehend the stanza to 

t The " Monthly Reviewers" of our late edition of Tractoration, 
would have it that ourself was a Scotchman " frae the north," &c. 
Now here's a yatikee phrase, merely to convince you that they were 
out in their conjectures. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 67 

By Parker's cement we'll endeavor* 
To make his shell as good as ever, 

which this note has reference. You will, therefore, shut up 
this, my volume, and per fas aut nefas obtain possession of 
Dr Burnet's theory of the earth's formation ; and when 
you have diligently drudged through that treatise, we will 
again take you in tow, and permit you to accompany us, but 
non passibus equis, till our muse salutes you with procul I 
O procul ! 6ic. 

* By Parker's cement we '11 endeavor. 

A composition has been invented by a Mr Parker, which 
bids fair to become one of the most important discove- 
ries which has s.igaalized the present century. The gen- 
tleman has compounded a cement or mortar, which, by 
the mere action of the air, assumes in a week or two the 
durability and consistence of the hardest marble and the 
firmest stone, and may be applied to all the purposes to 
which the strongest grained freestone is usually applied. 
Bridges, aqueducts, houses, and we suppose pavements and 
roads, can be as well constructed of this material as of the 
ordinary matters used in their composition. The ornaments 
and articles usually made of marble can also be made of the 
same materials, as it admits of a high polish, is incalculably 
cheaper, just as durable, much lighter, and more easily 
worked. It is not unlikely, that the waters ©f the Croton 
may be brought to New York in pipes and aqueducts mad* 
of this article, as it would be so much more economical than 
if transported thither in a canal of masonry, besides that the 
new canal is impervious, never leaks, and consequently no 
expenses for repairing would be ever incurred. There is not 
an article used in household matters, or for public purposes 
thai has formerly been made of stone, but admits of the sub- 



68 TERRIBLE TRACTORATIOIir. 

Now when we've made our batch of moons, 
Philosophers, unless they 're loons, 
Will, though we 're such a surly gnostic, 
Name one of them "Great Doctor Caustic!" 

These, among many, are but few 

Of mighty things that I could do; 

All which I '11 state, if 't is your pleasure. 

Much more at large when more at leisure. 

Now, it appears, from what I state here, 
My plans for mending human nature 
Entitle me to take the chair 
From Rousseau, Godwin, or Voltaire, 

They are of most immense utility ; 
All tend to man's perfectibility ; 
And if pursued, I dare to venture ye, 
He '11 be an angel in a century. 

Although St Pierre, a knowing chap. 
Deserves a feather in his cap 



stitution of this cheaper and lighter article ; and we Team 
that the corporation have inspected the manufacture, and are 
impressed with a proper sense of its importance and appli- 
cability to civic purposes. — N. Y. Mirror. 



TERRIBLE TRA.CT0RAT10N. 69 

For having boldly set his foot on 
The foolish trash of Isaac Newton 5* 

Contrived a scheme, wh'ch Very nice is, 
For making tides of polar ices ; 
And fed old Oceiin^s tub with fountains^ 
From arctic and antarctic mountains* 

* The foolish trash of Isaac Newton. 

See Studies of Nature, hy St Pierre, m Avhicli that scKe- 
tning philosopher has, with wonderful adroitness, swept away 
the cobweb calculations of one Isaac Newton. Indeed, I 
never much admired the \vritings of the last mentioned gen- 
tleman, for the substantial reasons following. 

In the first place, the inside iof a man's noddle must be 
better furnished than that of St Pierre, or he will never be 
able to comprehend them. 

Secondly, it would he impossible to manufacture a system, 
like that of St Pierre, accounting for the various phenomena 
of nature, in a nefe and simple method, if one were obliged 
to proceed, like NeWton, in his Principia, in a dull, plodding, 
mathematical manner, and prove, or even render probable^ 
the things he asserts. But by taking some facts for granted, 
without proof, omitting to mention such as militate against 
a favorite theory, we may, with great facility, erect a splendid 
edifice of " airy nothings," founded on hypotheses without 
foundation. 

The said Isaac had taken it into his head that the earth's 
equatorial was longer than its polar diameter. This, he 
surmised from the circumstance of a pendulum vibrating 
slower near the equator than near the pole, and from finding 
that the centrifugal force of the earth would not fully account 
for the difference between the time of the vibrations at Cay* 
enne and at Paris* 



70 TERRIBLE TRACTOEATIOK'/ 

Though Mister Godwin told us how 
To make a clever sort of plough,* 

This, with other reasons equally plausible, led him to sup' 
pose that the earth was flattened near the poles, in the form 
of an oblate spheroid, and that a degree of latitude would, 
af consequeftce, be greater near the pole than at the equator. 
Actual admeasurement coincided with that conclusion. 

The abbe St Pierre, however, possessing a most laudable 
ambition to manufacture tides from polar icesy and thus to 
overturn Sir Isaac's theory relative to the moon's influence in 
producing those phenomena, and finding it somewhat con- 
venient for that pi>rpose to place his poles at a greater dis- 
tance from the centre of gravity than the equator, accordingly 
took that liberty. He likewise had another substantial 
reason therefor. Unless his polar diameter was longer 
than his equatorial, the tides, being caused by the fusion of 
polar ices, must flow up hill. 

He therefore drew a beautiful diagram with which a 
triangle Would (according to the scheme of the author of 
The Loves of the Triang-les, improved from Dr Darwin's 
Loves of the Plants) certainly fall in love at first sight. 
(See page xxxiv. Pref. Studies of Nature.) In displaying 
his geometrical skill in this diagram, however, he took care 
to forget that there was some little difference between an 
oblong- and an oblate spheroid. — That flattening the earth's 
surface, either in a direction perpendicular or parallel to the 
poles, would increase the length of a degree of latitude by 
decreasing the earth's convexity. That neither an oblate, 
nor an oblong spheroid was quite so spherical as a perfect 
sphere. This was very proper, because such facts would 
have been conclusive agamst his new Theory of the Tides. 

* To make a clever sort of plough. 

^ If you wish, gentlemen, to know anything further relative 
to this instinctive plough, you will take the trouble to consult 



TERRIBLE TRACTORaTION. 71 

Which would e'en set itself to work, 
And plough an acre in a jerk. 

Though Price's projects are so clever, 
They show us how to live for ever* 
Unless we blunder, to our cost, 
And break our heads against a post ! 

Though Darwin, thinking to dismay us. 
Made dreadful clattering in chaos, 

Mr Godwin's Pol'tical Justice, in which you will find almost 
as many sublime and practicable schemes for meliorating- the 
condition of man, as in this very erudite work of my own. 
Let it not be inferred from my not enlarging upon the present 
and other schemes of this philosopher, that I would regard 
him as one whit inferior to any other modern philosopher 
existing, not even excepting his friend Holcroft ; but ttitJ 
necessity of expatiating on the redundancy of Mr Godwin's 
merits, is totally precluded by the unbounded fame which his 
chaste productions have at length acquired among the virtu- 
ous and respectable classes in community. 

* They show us how to live for ever. 

The learned Dr Price, in his Tracts on Civil Liberty, 
assures us that such sublime discoveries will be hereafter 
made by men of science (meaning such as Dr Caustic) that 
it will be possible to cure the disease of old age, give msn a 
perpetual sublunary existence, and introduce the milleniuni, 
by natural causes. 



73 TERRIBLE TRACTOR ATI 01*. 

And form'd, with horrid quakes t' assist him, 
His new exploded solar system** 

* His new exploded solar system. 

" Through all the realms the kindling ether runs^ 

And the mass starts into a million suns ; 

Earths round each sun with quick explosions burst, 

And second planets issue from the first ; 

Bend, as they journey with projectile force, 

In bright ellipses their reluctant course ; 

Orbs wheel in orbs, round centres centres roll, 

And form, self-balanced one revolving whole." 

Botanic Garden, Canto u 

This sublime philosopher has been most atrociously squib- 
bed in the following performance, which I can assure you, 
gentlemen, is not mine ; and, if I could meet with the author, 
I would teach him better than to bespatter my favorite with 
the filth of his obloquy. 

" Lines on a certain philosopher, who maintains that all 
continents and islands were thrown from the sea by volcanoes ; 
and that all animal life originally sprung from the exuviae of 
fishes. His family arms are three scallop shells, and his 
motto, " Omnia e Conchis." 

*' From atoms in confusion hurl'd, 

Old Epicurus built a world ; — 
Maintain'd that all was accidental, 
Whether corporeal powers, or mental ,' 
That feet were not devised for walking, 
For eating, teeth ; nor tongues for talking j 
But CHANCE, the casual texture made. 
And thus each member found its trade. 
And in this hodge podge of stark nonsense, 
He buried virtue, truth and conscience — 



ffiRRlBLE TRACTbfeATlOlfT. 73 

Though Vohiey, having in his view, 

First peer'd our continent through and through,* 

Darwin at last resolves to list 

Under this grand cosmogonist. 

He, too, renounces his Creator, 

And solves all sense from senseless matter' } 

Makes men stsirt up from dead fish bones, 

As old Deucalion did from stones ; 

Forms mortals quick as eyes could twinkle, 

From lobster, cfab, and periwinkle — « 

Oh Doctor ! Change thy foolish motto, 

Or keep it for some lady's grotto i 

Else thy poor patients well may quake. 

If thou canst no more mend than make.'^ 

* First peer'd our continent through and through. 

Citizen Volney made a very curious, simple, and conven- 
ient division of the " Interior Structure" of North America, 
from certain specimens of mineral substances, collected by 
this industrious pedestrian in a tour of observation through 
the United States. Notwithstanding the immense extent of 
territory which has come under citizen Volney 's cognizance, 
and the short time which he did us the honor to reside and 
peregrinate among us, we find that he was able to parcel ouf 
continent into different interior departments, with as much 
precision as Buonaparte showed in matking the different pro- 
vinces of his empire. He gives us " The granite region, the 
grit or sandstone region, the calcareous or limestone region,'^ 
&c. &c. 

Now this division is the more ingenious, because it pos^ 
sesses no foundation in nature ; and therefore shows a won- 
derful invention in its author. It happens, luckily for this 
fine theory, that granite is found in wonderful abundance in 



7A TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

Left lis a specimen of the quality 
Of graduated French morality.* 

the limestone region, and that throughout the continent, in 
defiance of Mr Volney, we find that nature has jumbled all 
his " regions" together. Nature, having made some con- 
fusion in this way, has the more need of the assistance of 
modern philosophy to aid her defective operations. 

* Of graduated French morality. 

This gentleman published in America a small pamphlet, 
entitled, The Law of Nature, or Principles or Morality, 
deduced from the Physical Constitution of Mankind and the 
Universe. In this he tells us, " It is high time to prove that 
morality is a physical and geometrical science, and as such^ 
susceptible, like the rest, of calculation and mathematical 
demonstration. 

My friend, doctor Timothy Triangle, is much such another 
philosopher ; but has surpassed the Frenchman in the extent 
of his views, and made systems which were entirely out of 
the reach of Mr Volney's intellect. Among others, was a 
scale of national character. By this, the latitude and longi- 
tude of a place being given, and a sort of tare and tret allow- 
ance made for adventitious circumstances, he could ascertain 
the character of its inhabitants. The latitude of Paris, he 
affirmed, was that of perfectibility made perfect, and most 
lucidly manifested in the person of the Liberty-loving Em- 
peror. Rise to the equator, or recede to the pole from that 
parallel, and human nature dwindles in arithmetical pro-* 
gression. 

This gentleman was a great admirer of the principles of 
the French revolution, and made out, mathematically, how 
much blood, horror, and devastation would be necessary to 
give that predominance to France and French principles, 
which would terminate in philosophy's millennium. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATI <r<. 75 

Though Priestley manufactured souls, 
For which we had him o'er the coals, 
A thing we had forgot to mention, 
For making use of our invention. 

BufFon, with other wonders done, 
A comat dash'd athwart the sun, 
And, hitting off a flaming slice. 
Our earth created in a trice. 

The«e wights, when taken altogether, 
Are but the shadow of a feather 
Compared with Caustic, even as 
A puff of hydrogenous gas. 

Should you pronounce my systems ia£ 
For want of some astringent facts, 
1 Ml knock you down, by my surprising 
New method of philosophizing. 

I first a fine new system form, 
Which none can either sap or storm ; 

Dr Triangle likewise made geometrical scales of moralityj 
which were not very essentially different from the principles 
of Volney. These scales were adapted accurately to the 
interest, feelings, passions, and prepossessions of the persons 
for whom they were intended, and so elastic that they would 
stretch to suit any case, and authorize any action whicii 
could be conceived or perpetrated. 



76 TERRIBLE TRACTORATtON. 

Then, to support my favorite plan, 
I muster all the facts I can* 

To make my theories defensible. 
Whereas soine facts are indispensable, 
From east, west, north and south I rake 'em, 
And when not ready made — I make them ! ! 

Thus, for posterity's behoof. 

We 've made our systems bullet proof; 

Assailing us with ire red hot, 

Is battering walls with pigeon shot. 

But ^, in spite of my renown, 
Alas I am harrass'd, hunted down; 
Completely damn'd, the simple fact is, 
By Perkins's Metallic Practice !* 

Our should-be wise and learn'd societies 
Are guilty of great improprieties. 
In treating me in manner scandalous. 
As if I were a very Vandal 5 thus 

* By Perkins's Metallic Practice. 

Here comes the Hydra, which you Herculean gentlemeii 
are requested to destroy ; but the means, by which this great 
end is to be accomplished, will be fully pointed out in the 
succeeding cantos. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 77 

Determined, as I have no doubt, 

My sun of genius to put out, 

Which, once extinct, they think that so 'tis 

Their glow-worm lights may claim some notice. 

Such hum-drum heads and hollow hearts 
Pretend, forsooth, t' encourage arts ! 
But that pretence, in every sense is 
The flimsiest of all pretences. 

Those noble spirited Macenases 
To me have shown the greatest meannesses ; 
Have granted me for these things said al!. 
Not one half-penny, nor a medal ! II 



CANTO II. 

CONJURATIONS! 



ARGUMENT. 

The Bard proceeds like one that 's striving 
To practise Arnall's art of diving ;* 
Presents sublime and strange narrations 
Of wizards, ghosts, and conjurations ; 
Next towers in Delia Cruscan style 
Above old Homer half a mile ; 
And flutters round in airy region, 
Jilst like a wild goose or a pigeon ; 
Fired with the theme of Haygarth's praises 
Until his rapture fairly blazes ; 
Then, in a duel, shows more prowess, 
Than Vandal that e'er was or now is ! 

But 1 'm a man so meek and humble, f 
I do n't allow myself to grumble, 

* " Not so bold Arnall ; with a weight of skull 
Furious he drives precipitately dull : 
Whirlpools and storms his circling arms invest, 
With all the weight of gravitation blest." 

Pope's Dunciad, Book iii. 
+ But I'm a man so meek and humble. 

If your worships have ever read the Eneid of one Virgil 
(which though possible is not xeTj probable, as physicians in 



80 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

Am loth your patience thus to batter, 
Though starving is a serious matter.* 

Another reason too, may 't please ye, 
Why thus I dare presume to tease ye ; 
If you ray wrongs should not redress, 
We all must be in one sad mess!f 

general rarely make themselves " mad," by " too much 
learning") you will perceive a classical beauty in the com- 
mencement of this canto, which would escape the observation 
of the ^' ig^iobile vulgus." As I wish, however, that you 
might be able to relish some of the most obvious beauties of 
this, my most exquisite poetical production, you will hire some 
schoolmaster to show you how happily we have imitated the 
" At regina gravi" of Virgil, and the " But now t' observe 
romantic method" of Butler. 

* Though starving- is a serious matter ! 

Many a worthy London alderman will most feelingly sigh 
a dolorous response to this pathetic complaint. 

t We all must be in one sad mess. 

The sound is here a most correct echo to the sense ; like 
the 

£y] S' axemv naQa -d^ira 7roXv(pXoiapoio ^aXaaatig, 

of Homer ; the 

Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum, 
of Virgil ; the 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 81 

The credit of our craft is waning, 
Then rouse at this my sad complaining ; 
For, though my fate now seem the rougher, 
Still you as well as / must suffer. 

Behold ! a rising Institution,* 
To spread Perkinean delusion ; 
Supported in their vile designs, 
By doctors, quakers, dukes, divines. 

Unless these villainous Perkineans 

Are forthwith hurl'd to Nick's dominions, 

Many a lusty thwack and bang, 

of Butler ; 

And ten low words oft creep in one dull line, 

of Pope, &e. Indeed, gentlemen, I shall almost be tempted 
to pronounce that person a sorry sort of a simpleton, who 
does not see, or seem to see, the lengthened visage and hang- 
ing lip of our learned Esculapian Fraternity, depicted with 
the phiz-hitting pencil of a Hogarth, in these eight beautiful 
and appropriate monosyllables. 

* Behold a rising Institution. 

The builders of this second edition of the tower of Babel 
must be confounded ; and that they will be, most certainly, 
provided the measures herein after recommended, be fully 
and manfully carried into effect. But as it may be safest to 
reconnoitre somewhat before we begin the attack, we will 
introduce you into the midst of the enemy's encampment, in 
an additional note at the end of our poem. 
6 



82 TERRIBLE TRACTORATIOK. 

Those wicked tractors, I 'm afraid, 
Will overturn the doctor's trade. 

And then, alas ! your worships may 
Be forced to moil the live long day. 
With hammer, pickaxe, spade, or shovel. 
And nightly tenant some old hovel. 

Or, destitute of food and lodging. 
Through dark and dirty lanes be dodging, 
Unless t' avoid such dismal lurkings, 
You put a powerful paw on Perkins. 

Behold what ought to raise your spleen high, 
Perkins supported by Aldini !* 
It must have been most sad, foul weather, 
From Italy to blow him hither. 

My wrath, indeed, is now so keen, I 
Ev'n wish, for sake of that Aldini, 

* Perkins supported by Aldini ! 

These two wonder-working wizards are said to effect their 
necromantic manoeuvres by the application of similar princi- 
ples to the animal machine. But the latter does not, in so 
great a degree, infringe on our privileges, for he begins where 
we leave off; tliat is, after the patient is dead; whereas Per- 
kins, by his pretended easy and expeditious mode of curing 
those who ought to depend solely on " death and the doctor," 
is a more formidable foe to our profession. See additional 
note, No. 3. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 83 

This ink were poison for the wizard, 
This pen a dagger in his gizzard ! 

For he ('t is told in public papers) 
Can make dead people cut droll capers : 
And shuffling off death's iron trammels, 
To kick and hop like dancing camels. 

To raise a dead dog he was able,* 
Though laid in quarters on a table. 
And led him yelping, round the town, 
With two legs up, and two legs down ;f 

* To raise a dead dog he was able. 

" Dr Aldini, now in London, lately exhibited, at the house 
of Mr Hunter, some curious experiments on the body of a 
dog newly killed, by which the company then present were 
exceedingly astonished at the powers of Galvanism. The 
head of the animal was cut off. The head and the body 
were put beside each other on a table, previously rubbed with 
a solution of Ammonia. Two wires, communicating with 
the Galvanic trough, were then applied, the one in the ear, 
the other at the anus of the dead animal. No sooner had 
those applications been made, than both head and body were 
thrown into the most animated muscular motions. The 
body started up with a movement, by which it passed over 
the side of the table. The head equally moved, its lips and 
teeth grinning most violently !" Vide the Morning- Post of 
January 6th, 1803. 

t With two legs up, and two legs down. 
Your worships will perceive that I have detailed some 
particulars relative to this famous experiment, which were 



84 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

And, in the presence of a posse 
Of our great men, and Andreossi, 
He show'd black art of worse description, 
Than e'er did conjuring Egyptian. 

He cut a bullock's head I ween, 
Sheer off, as if by guillotine ; 
Then (Satan aiding the adventure) 
He made it bellow like a Stentor !* 



omitted in the above statement from the Morning Post. But 
should any gentleman among j'ou presume to intimate that I 
have stated one syllable which is not strictly and literally 
true, I shall embrace the fashionable mode of resenting the 
affront. I have two pistols in my garret. Let him who 
dares dispute Dr Caustic take his choice. Then, unless 

" Pallas should come, in shape of rust, 
And 'twixt the lock and hammer thrust 
Her Gorgon shield, and make the cock 
Stand stiff as 'twere transform'd to stock," 

I will make it apparent that I am a man of honor, as well 
as veracity, 

♦ He made it bellow like a Stentor ! 

" Some curious Galvanic experiments were made on Friday 
last, by professor Aldini, in doctor Pearson's lecture room. 
They were instituted in the presence of his excellency, the 
ambassador of France, general Andreossi, lord Pelham, the 
duke of Roxburgh, lord Castlereagh, lord Hervey, the Hon. 
Mr Upton, &c. The head of an ox, recently decapitated, 
exhibited astonishing effects ; for the tongue being drawn out 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 85 

And this most comical magician 
Will soon, in public exhibition, 
Perform a feat he 's often boasted, 
And animate a dead pig — ■■ — roasted. 

With powers of these Metallic Tractors, 

He can revive dead malefactors ; 

And is reanimating daily. 

Rogues that were hung once, at Old Bailey !* 

by a hook fixed into it, on applying the exciters, in spite of 
the strength of the assistant, was retracted, so as to detach 
itself, by tearing itself from the hook ; at the same time, a 
loud noise issued from the mouth, attended by violent con- 
tortions of the whole head and eyes." See Morning' Post 
of February 16th, 1803, 

* Rogues that were hung once, at Old Bailey ! 

" The body of Forster, who was executed on Monday last, 
for murder, was conveyed to a house not far distant, where 
it was subjected to the Galvanic process, by professor Aldini, 
under the inspection of Mr Keate, Mr Carpue, and several 
other professional gentlemen. M. Aldini, who is the nephew 
of the discoverer of this most interesting science, showed 
the eminent and superior powers of Galvanism to be far 
beyond any other stimulant in nature. On the first applica- 
tion of the process to the face, the jaw of the deceased crim- 
inal began to quiver ; and the adjoining muscles were horribly 
contorted, and one eye was actually opened. In the subse- 
quent part of the process, the right hand was raised and 
CLENCHED, and the legs and thighs were set in motion. 

" It appeared to the uninformed part of the by-standers, as 



B6 TERRlfiLE TR ACTOR Att ON. 

And sure I am, he '11 break the peace^ 
Unless secured by our police ; 
Por such a chap, as you Ve alive, 
Full many a felon will revive. 

And as he can (no doubt of that) 
Give rogues the nine lives of a cat ; 
Why then, to expiate their crimes, 
These rogues must all be hnng nine times^ 

What more enhances this offence is, 
*T will ninefold government's expenses ; 
And such a load, in name of wonder, 
Pray how can Johnny Bull stand under? 

Thefl why not rise, and make a clatter, 
And put a stop to all this matter — 
Why don't you rouse, I say, in season, 
And cut the wicked wizard's weasand ? 



if the wretched man was on the eve of being restored to life. 
This, however, was impossible ; as several of his friends, 
Ivho were near the scaflold, had violently pulled his legs, in 
order to put a more speedy termination to his sufferings." 
Vide the Morning- Post of January 22, 1803. 

It is to be hoped, in case this Mr Professor undertakes any 
future operations of this nature, that some more choleric dead 
Tnan will not only clench his fist like Forster, but convince 
him, by dint of pugilistic demonstration, that he is not to 
disturb with impunity those who ought to be at " rest Jrom 
thevr labors,^' 



^fERRlBLE TRACfORATlON. 87 

• r is true, alas ! I 'm loth to say, 
That you forsake the good old \vay>, 
And tread a path so very odd, 
So unlike that your fathers trod>, 

With what delight the poet fancies 

He sees their worships plague old Francis 5^ 

* He sees their worships plague old Francis. 

Dr Francis Anthony. The author of the Biographic 
Britannica relates a pitiful tale respecting the persecutions 
suffered by this obstinate old schismatic. " He was," says 
that writer, " a very learned physician and chemist, the son 
T>f an eminent goldsmith in London. Was born April 16th, 
1550. In 1569, he Was sent to the university of Cambridge ; 
in 1574, took the degree of A. M. &c. &c. He began soon 
after his arrival (in London) to publish to the world the 
^effects of his chemical studies. But not having taken the 
necessary precaution of addressing himself to the College of 
Physicians for their license, he fell under their displeasure ; 
and being some time in the year 1600 summ.oned before the 
president and censors, he confessed that he had practised 
physic in London for six months, and had cured twenty per- 
sons or more of several diseases." [A most atrocious crime I 
I trust very few if any of your worships would be justified 
in confessing- or pleading guilty to a similar indictment.] 
" About one month after, he was committed to the Counter 
prison, and fined in the sum of five pounds propter illiciiam 
praxim — that is, for prescribing against the statutes of the 
college : but upon his application to the chief justice, he was 
set at liberty, which gave so great an umbrage, that the 
president and one of the censors waited on the chief justice 



bo TERRIBLE TRACTORATIOiy* 

While he, sad wight, wo-worn and pale^ 
Is dragg'd about from jail to jail ! 

For he was such a stubborn dragon, 
He would not down and worship Dagon 5 
That is to say, would not acknowledge 
Supremacy of your great college 1 

And what was worse, if worse could be, 
And raised their ire to such degree, 

to request his favbr in preserving the college privileges : upon 
which Anthony submitted and promised to pay his fine, an($ 
was forbidden practice. He was soon after accused again 
for practising physic, and upon his own confession was fined 
another five pounds, which fine, on his refusing to pay, was 
increased to twenty pounds, and he was sentenced to be com- 
mitted to prison till he had paid it. Nor was the college 
satisfied with this, but commenced a suit at law against him, 
in the name of the queen and college, in which they prevailed, 
and had judgment against him. It appears that the learned 
society thought him ignorant ; but there were others of a 
different opinion, since, after all these censures, and being 
tossed about from prison to prison, he became doctor of phy- 
sic in our own universities !" 

This is the substance of the proceedings of our ancestors 
against the arch-heretic ; from which we learn the absolute 
necessity of a still more rigorous prosecution of those distur- 
bers of society, who have the impudence to cure their patients 
without YOUH License. Had this old fellow been hung, or 
"burnt ofi"," as he deserved, the business would have been 
finished at once, and none would afterwards have dared ever 
to call in question your supremacy ! 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION, 89 

That they to Tyburn swore they 'd cart him ; 
He cured folks " non secundum artem." 

His patients saved, from mere compassion, 
Though killing was the most in fashion ! 
Then well your father's ire might burn as 
Hot as the famed Chaldean furnace ! 

Thus, when the heretic Waldenses, 

With their co-working Albigenses, 

Found, what they thought they might rely on, 

A nearer way to go to Zion, 

Those saints who trod the beaten path, 
Were fill'd so full of godly wrath, 
They burnt them off, nor thought it cruel, 
As one would burn a load of fuel ! 

These things I note, to bring to view 
Some noble precedents for you : 
The chapter needs not any comment ; 
Then pray don't hesitate a moment. 



But, hark ! what means that moaning sound I 
That thunder rumbling under ground ! 
What mean those blue sulphureous flashes, 
That make us all turn pale as ashes I 



90 TEItRiBLE TRACtORAtlOJf* 

Why in the ah- this dreadful drumming, 
As though the devil himself were coming* 
Provoked by magical impostors, 
To carry off a doctor Faustus ! 

Why scream the bats 1 why hoot the owls ! 
While Darwin^s midnight bull-dog howls!* 
Say, what portends this mighty rumpus, 
To fright our senses out of compass ! 

'T is Radcliffe's sullen sprite now rising,! 
To warn you by a sight surprising, 

* Why scream the bats ! why hoot the owls ! 
While Darwin's midnight bull-dog howls ! 

A delectable imitation of Dr Darwin's delightful pair ol' 
lines — 

" Shrill scream the famished bats and shiverings owls, 
And long and loud the dog of midnight howls. 

To prevent any post obit disputes among those Who may 
hereafter write comments on this sublime passage. I have 
thought it advisable to designate the species of the dog which 
howls so horridly on this great occasion. 

t 'Tis Radcliffe's sullen sprite now rising. 

This shows Pluto to be a god of correct calculation. Had 
he sent one of your water-gruel ghosts, it is a thousand 
to one if your worships would have paid the least deference 
♦o the mandates of his sooty highness. 



More solemn than a curtain lecture, 
Or Monk-y Lewis' Spanish Spectre 



(* 



Now, in a sort of* moody mutterj 
These awful sounds I hear him utter^ 
Which make my heart to beat and thwack it^ 
And burst the buttons off my jacket ! 

" 'T is not from motives of endearment 
That I have burst my marble cearment 5 

* Or Mdnk-y Lewis' Spanish Spectre ! 

I would have no impudent slanderer insinuate that I meafl 
to bestow on the right honorable M, G. Lewis, M, P. any 
opprobrious epithet. No, gentlemen, I did not say monkey. 
The term which I use is an adjective, legitimately coined from 
the substantive Monk ; and I affix it to this gentleman's name 
as an honorary appellation, to which he is entitled, for having 
Written that celebrated romance called The Monk^ As to 
the Spanish Spectre, you will please to consult the romance 
aforesaid, and you will find a most horrible ballad, by which 
it appears that a certain Miss Imogene was carried off on 
her bridal night, if I mistake not, by the ghost of one Don 
Alonzo, to whom she had been betrothed, but proved false 
hearted. I would, however, caution against reading this 
doleful ditty by candle light, lest the story of 

" The worms they crept in, and the worms they crept out, 
And they sported his eyes and his temples about," 

might sport with the senses of the more timid reader. 



92 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

No ; I 'm from Hades, in a hurry, 

To make above ground one d — d flurry!* 

" Arm'd, as the dread occasion urges, 
With Ate^s borrow'd snakes and scourges, 
I come to rouse ye into action, 
To crush the Perkinising faction. 

"1 tell you, these detested tractors, 
The worst of Satan's manufactures, 
Will set themselves to supersede us. 
Will even blister, cup, and bleed us; 

"And they 'II be used as diuretics, 
Cathartics, anodynes, emetics. 
And will begin, before they 're done^ 
To tap for dropsy, cut for stone. 

* To make above ground one d — d flurry ! 

I earnestly request that the learned college will not do me 
the injustice to suppose that a man of my delicacy and 
refined feelings would myself utter any phrase like the above, 
which has so much the semblance of profanity. But as this 
personage, before he passed that fatal " bourne" (from which 
one " traveller" /tos " returned") had ever been accustomed, 
like most of our profession, to rhetorical flourishes of this 
kind, it must be expected that, on such an important occa- 
sion, he would express himself with all his wonted energy ; 
and my veracity as a historian obliges me to give verbatim 
the speech which the sprite did in fact deliver. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 93 

"The self-same metal, it is said, 
With friar Bacon's brazen head, 
Each point 's a more mysterious thing 
Than Goodman Gyges' brazen ring. 

•' And they will mend a wooden leg 

Much better than a walnut peg. 

Will make a rogue a pair of ears. 

Who 's had them clipp'd by Justice's shears. 

" Make Hydra heads spring up, I ween, 
For people shaved by guillotine ; 
Thus force our freedom loving neighbors 
To recommence their humane labors. 

"Why stand ye now, with stupid stare, 
Hen-hearted cowards, as you are ? 
Arise I and quickly gird your might on, 
And into battle then rush right on ! 

" Go ! teach Ferkineans their errors. 
In tampering with the king of terrors ! 
Go ! teach the varlets to defy 
Our great and terrible ally ! 

No pusilanimous responses 

That you 're not fond of broken sconces ; 



94 TERRIBLE TRICTORATION. 

Don't say to me, you 've no delight in 
The dreadful, awful, trade of fighting. 

" For you might chase them many a mile, and 
E'en bid them, scampering, quit our island, 
And still your carcases be strangers 
To troublous toils, and desperate dangers. 

" Appear in field, the battle 's won ; 
Your phizzes show — L — d how they'll run ! 
But you 're like sheep, a sort of cattle, 
That one can't well drive into battle. 

« O could I but affairs contrive 
To be for one half hour alive. 
What flaming shafts of indignation 
I 'd hurl at imps of Tractoration ! 

" I '11 batter ye with Pluto's bludgeon. 
Unless to battle you now budge on, 
And make more bluster with your train, 
Than devils in a hurricane ! 

" I '11 drive ye down" — but dawning day 
Bids bullying phantom hie away ; 
While horror makes each hair stand steadfast, 
Like quill of hedgehog in our head fast ! 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 95 

So Stood the Premier of your nation, 
When RoBsoN bawl'd out '' Defalcation ! 
Government 's robb'd by wicked men, 
And cannot pay nineteen pounds ten"!!!* 

So petrified stood bull and bear, 
Of Stock Exchange, when the lord mayor. 
With vile chagrin and terror quaking. 
Found Hawkesbury's letter all a take-in.f 

* And cannot pay nineteen pounds ten" ! ! ! 

The terrible shock given not only to Mr Addington, but to 
the credit of the British nation, by this famous sally of that 
teasing, testy, querulous, alarming, honorable, cidevant mem- 
ber of the House of Commons, is undoubtedly fresh in the 
recollection of every person, who has the least smattering in 
parliamentary debates : and every true patriot and friend to 

the peace of our prime minister, will congratulate the 

country on the failure of Mr Robson's election, as well as 
that of his co-operator, Mr Jones, into the new parliament. 

t Found Hawkesbury's letter all a take-in. 

Now 1 know the man who cobbled up the famous humbug 
peace with France, which, in my opinion, was a manoeuvre 
that did honor to its inventor. He tenants a garret adjacent 
to mine. But Dr Caustic is an honorable man, and twioe 
the £iOOO offered by the stock exchange, with the £500 by 
the lord mayor, for his apprehension, would not tempt him 
to expose the neck of his friend to the noose of justice. 
This I premise, that the Bow street officers may not misap- 
ply their time and talents in any futile attempts to wheedle 
or extort the secret. 



96 TERRIBLE TRACTORATIOiV. 

Now should you slight the dire monition 
Of this ill boding apparition, 
You truly will be well deserving 
The dreadful destiny of starving! 

O then, dread sirs, brimful of rage, 
War ! horrid war ! is yours to wage, 
To extirpate the deadly schism. 
The heresy of Perkinism ! 

Pursue the steps that learned sage hath. 
The most redoubted doctor Haygarth, 
Who erst o'er Perkins's sconce at Bath, 
Broke a whole gallipot of wrath !* 

* Broke a whole gallipot of wrath ! 

I beseech you, gentlemen, to suspend your impatience re- 
lative to this wonderful achievement, till you have soared 
through a few stanzas. In the meantime, however, I wish 
that this my favorite hero, and burthen of my song, should 
stand high with your worships, and be the object of the 
humble admiration, not only of your honorable body, but 
of mankind in general : and I, myself, shall take the liberty 
to trample on all those, who dare call in question his infalli- 
bility. I have a knowledge of but few, who more deserve to 
be trodden upon on this occasion than the conductors of cer- 
tain foreign literary journals, who, not aware of the incon- 
ceivable services which Dr H. has rendered the medical host 
by his ardent zeal against their common enemy, Perkinism, 
have expressed their sentiments of him, and his works, with 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 97 

Oh ! could I sing Haygarth's chef (TtEuvre, 
That mighty magical manoeuvre, 

that indifference, which must hare arisen from their want of 
knowledge of his achievements. 

Among the most prominent of this junto should be men- 
tioned the Medical Repository, at New York, conducted by 
professors Mitchell and Miller, of that place, the former of 
whom I understand is a representative in the Congress of the 
United States, an eminent physician, and the celebrated 
author of what is usually termed the " Mitchellian Theory of 
Contagion," alterations in the French Chemical Nomencla- 
ture, &c. The latter, I am told, is likewise a physician of 
great respectability. 

Now that two such characters should presume to represent 
Dr H. as a man, whose " vanity is more conspicuous than 
his ability," is a circumstance which, while ii excites my 
surprise, rouses my resentment. However, to accomplish 
their disgrace and his renown, I shall concisely state his 
magnanimous conduct to them, and their ungracious return. 

Dr H. in great condescension to the poor wretches of the 
United States, who, through the ignorance and inexperience 
of their medical practitioners, were likely to be extirpated by 
the yellow fever, addressed them in an affectionate letter, 
and proclaimed the barbarity and unskilfulness of their 
physicians, in a very appropriate and becoming manner. He 
even kindly apprized the Academy of Medicine, at Philadel- 
phia, that their proceedings and reasonings on the disease 
among them were " frivolous, inadequate, and groundless," 
and communicated many other facts equally useful and im- 
portant. 

Now, whether his statements were true or false, those 

foreigners ought to have been grateful to Dr H. for honoring' 

them with the information. But on the contrary, they say 

that " a poison, which, in the city of New York, has de- 

7 



98 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

That feat, thn which, you '11 own, if candid. 
None greater ever mortal man did ! 

stroyed, within three months, the lives of more than twenty 
practitioners of medicine, well deserves to be traced and 
understood by the survivors." They even have the audacity 
to assert, that " American physicians and philosophers, who 
have viewed the rise and progress of pestilence, walked 
amidst it by day and by night, year after year, and endured 
its violence on their own persons, almost to the extinction of 
their lives." ought to be as competent judges of the cause 
and cure of the disease as Dr Haygarth, who has never seen 
a case of it. 

After entering into a copious (about 20 pages) and what 
they seem to think a learned investigation of my great friend's 
theory and sentiments, they have dared to refute his reason- 
ing, and turn it to ridicule. 

These presumptuous writers finally close their unreason- 
able account of Dr Haygarth, in quotations from Dr Caldwell, 
who, it appears, is a fellow of the college of physicians of 
Philadelphia, and a very ungentleman-like fellow too, for he 
has also had the rashness to descant on some of the works 
of Dr Haygarth in terms following. 

" Perhaps he (Dr Haygarth) may found the boldness of 
his pretensions as an author on the maturity of his years. 
Many writers less youthful are more modest ; and it is to be 
lamented that grey hairs give no infallible earnest of either 
wisdom or liberality. We will not positively assert that he 
is not a man of profound erudition ; but we have no reason 
whatever to convince us that he is. Perhaps he may pride 
himself on being a native of the same country which pro- 
duced a Harvey, a Sydenham, a Cullen, and a Hunter. We 
entreat him to remember, that weeds may infest the same 
ground which has been overshadowed by the lordly adanso- 
nia, and that the same clime gives birth to the lion and the 
jackal." Medical Repository, vol. v. p. 333. Oh, fie ! fie I 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 99 

But ere I "sweep the sounding lyre," 
Or tune Apollo's fiddle higher, 
I'll steal (although it cost a halter) 
A brand from Delia Crusca's altar. 

<' O THOU !" who soar'dst to heights sublimer 

Than e'er before attain'd by rhymer, 

Till even my good friend Apollo 

At distance gazed, but dared not follow, 

" Genius or muse," who had'st propensity 
To seem to strive to stretch immensity, 
Whose ^^airy lays," quoth Bell's fraternity, 
Would last through more than one eternity, 

(Although it seems, the deuce is in \ 
Those very lays are out of print, 
A proof this age does not inherit 
One ounce of true poetic spirit) 

O come, and bring (delightful things) 
A pair of Delia Cruscan wings. 
That we, by sublimated flight. 

May « STEM THE CATARACT OF LIGHT." 

Then condescend to be my crony, 
And guide my wild Parnassian pony. 



J 00 TERRIBLE TRACTORATIOW- 

Till our aerial cutter runs* 
Athwart "a wilderness of suns !"t 

* Till our aerial cutter runs. 

My mode of commencing an airy tour, mounted, Muse and 
Co. on a poetical pony, which, by the way, is metamorphosed 
into a cutter, may, perhaps, be objected to by your fastidious 
critics, as a liberty even beyond a poet's licentiousness. But 
there is nothing which we men of genius more thoroughly 
detest than any attempt to fetter our faculties with the frigid 
rules of criticism. Besides, sense or nonsense, poetry or 
gingling, it is perfectly Delia Cruscan. 

t " A Wilderness of suns !" 

This "proud" passage, together with "O thoi; !" — 
"genius or muse!" — and " cataract of light!" — are 
the legitimate offspring of that prince of poets, who rose to 
such a towering pitch of poetry, 

" That oft Hibernian optics bright 
Beheld him fairly out oj" sight .'" 

I should have been happy to have fascinated your worships 
with further specimens of the same sort of sublimity, could 
I have retained them in memory. I have been so solicitous 
for your gratification in this particular, that I have made a 
painful, though bootless search, throughout the metropolis 
and its suburbs, for these more than sybiline oracles. In- 
deed, I have reason to fear, that all Delia Crusca's effusions 
are irretrievably lost, except the few fragments which I have 
here pickled for the behoof of posterity. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 101 

But Gifford comes, with why and wherefore ;* 
And what the devil are you there for? 
Then tells a tale about the town, 
Contrived to lessen our renown. 

Says, if we rise but one inch higher^ 
We set our hat and wig on fire ; 
And that he '11 bet us ten to one 
We shall be scorched like Phaetoix, 

* But GifFord comes, with why and wherefore. 

The admirers of your polite poetry can never sufficiently 
anathematize the author of the Baviad and McBviad for ex- 
tirpating, root and branch, a species of sentimental ditty, 
which might be scribbled, without the trouble of " stfnse to 
prose ;" an object certainly of no small consequence with 
your bon ton readers and writers of rhyme. How could a 
sentimental Ensign or love-lorn Lieutenant be better employ- 
ed than in sobbing over " Laura's tinkling trash," or weeping 
in concert with the " mad jangle of Matilda's lyre ?" Be- 
sides, there ought to be whipped syllabub adapted to the 
palates of those Avho cannot relish '' Burns' pure healthful 
nurture." Mr Gifford should be sensible, that reducing 
poetry to the standard of common sense is clipping the wings 
of genius. For example ; there is no describing what sub- 
lime and Delia Cruscan-like capers I should myself have 
been cutting in this " Wilderness of suns ;" for I was about 
to prepare a nosegay of comets, and string the spheres like 
beads for a lady's necklace ; but was not a little apprehensive 
iest Mr G. or some other malignant critic should persuade 
the public, that my effusions of fancy were little better than 
the rant of a bedlamite. 



102 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION- 

Then I and Clio, as the case is, 
Must now resume our former places ; 
But still, to keep up our renown, 
We ride a " gairish sun-beam" down ! 

And now once more, in humble station. 
We '11 jog along in j)lain narration ; 
And tollutate o'er turnpike path,* 
To Tiew the conjuring crew at Bath. 

Behold! great Haygarth and his corpsf 
Of necromancers, just a score, 

* And tollutate o'er turnpike path. 
They rode, but authors having not 
Determin'd whether pace or trot, 
That is to saj'', whether tollutation, 
As they do term'/t, or succussation, 

Hudibras, Canto if. 

+ Behold ! great Haygarth and his corps. 

I here wish to give a concise sketch of the doctor's necro- 
mantic process, so well calculated to give the tractors the 
kick out of Bath and Bristol, where they were rapidly 
making the most sacrilegious encroachments on the unpol- 
luted shrine of our profession. I would recommend similar 
proceedings to every member of the college, and every 
worthy brother who is truly anxious to preserve the dignity 
and honor of the professional character. But would premise, 
that, when the like experiments are made, which, I trust, 
will be very generally by the whole profession, I would par- 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 103 

Enter the drear abodes of pain, 
Like death of old and horrid train ! 



ticularly recommend that the doctor's prudence, in not admit- 
ting any of the friends of the tractors at the scene of action, 
should be strictly imitated ; and also his discretion in choos- 
ing, as subjects for the experiment, the ignorant and miserable 
paupers of an infirmary, whose credulity will assist very 
much in operations of this sort. I also enjoin them to bear 
in mind his hint, " That if any person would repeat the 
experiment with wooden tractors, it should be done with due 
solemnity ; during the process, the wonderful cures said to 
he performed by the tractors, should be particularly related. 
Without these indispensable aids, other trials will not prove 
so successful as those which are are here reported." Hay^ 
garth's hook, page 4. 

It can scarcely be necessary for me to hint to my discreet 
brethren, in addition, that should they try the real tractors 
afterwards (which, however, I rather advise them not to do 
'at all) the whole of these aids of the mind are to be as strictly 
avoided. I had like to have forgotten to say, that the means 
Xised in the instance which follows to increase the solemnity 
of the scene, were a capital display of wigs, canes, stop- 
watches ; and a still more solemn and terrific spectacle, 
about a score of the brethren. The very commencement 
serves to show how " necessary'^ was all this display to ensure 
the success of these wooden tractors. 

" It was often necessary to play the part of a necromancer, 
to describe circles, squares, triangles, and half the figures i i 
geometry, on the parts affected, with the small end of the 
(wooden) tractors. During all this time we conversed upon 
the discoveries of Franklin and Galvani, laying great stress 
on the power of metallic points attracting lightning, and con- 
veying it to the earth harmless. To a more curious farce I 



104 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION, 

He comes ! he comes ! good heaven defend us ! 
With magic rites, and things tremendous I 

was never witness. We were almost afraid to look each 
other in the face, lest an involuntary smile should remove 
the mask from our countenances, and dispel the charm." 
Hay garth'' s book, page 16. 

A very ingenious friend of Dr H. and the glorious cause 
in which he is engaged, has conceived an improvement on 
this process. While the above operation is going on, surely? 
the adroit necromancer would handle his virgula divinitoria 
with far greater effect, and himself appear much more in 
character, by using a suitable incantation. The following 
has, therefore, been proposed for the general use of the pro- 
fession . 

Hocus ! pocus ! up and down ! 
Draw the white right from the crown I 
Hocus ! pocus ! at a loss ! 
Draw the brazen rod across ! 
Hocus ! pocus ! down and up ! 
Draw them both from foot to top ! 

Lest you should not have sufficient ingenuity to comprehend 
the ohjed of Dr Haygarth, in producing these operations on 
the minds of those paupers, by the aid of such means as he 
employed. I must try to explain it. It was to induce an in- 
ference on the part of the public, that if, hy any means what- 
soever, effects can be produced on the mind of a poor bed- 
ridden patent, whether such effect be favorable or unfavorable 
(as the latter was often the case in Haygarth's experiments) 
ergo, Perkins- s tractors cure diseases by acting on the mind 
also, whether on a human or brute subject. Should any 
person be so uncivil and unreasonable as to start the objection 
to this logic, that with the same propriety all medicines might 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 105 

With such as served the witch of Endor 
To make the powers of hell surrender ! 

Now draws full many a magic circle ; 

Now stamps, and foams, and swears meherc'le I 

As old Canidia used to mutter once, 

Just as her demon gave her utterance ! 

Now tells each trembling bed-rid zany 
Terrific tales of one Galvani ; 
How Franklin kept, to make folks wonder, 
A warehouse full of bottled thunder! 

Thus Shakspeare's Macbeth's wicked witches 

Even carry 'd matters to such pitches. 

In hoity-toity midnight revel, 

The old hags almost raised the devil ! 

And now our tragi-comic actors 
Torment a pair of wooden tractors ; 
All which, with many things they more did, 
III Haygarth's book you '11 find recorded. 

also be supposed to produce their effects by an action on the 
mind, I particularly advise (provided such person be a note d 
coward) that you challenge him or her to a duel : but if, on 
the contrary, he or she be a terrible Mae Namara-like fellow, 
modestly reply that it was all a joke, and you hope there 
was no offence. i 



106 TERRIBLE TRACTORATlOM. 

Since doctor Haygarth, as we 've stated, 
These points pernicious has prostrated, 
Our college ought to canonize him ; 
Instead of that, the rogues despise him. 

And there's a certain doctor Caldwell 
May calculate on being maul'd well, 
Unless, since he's presumed to flout him, 
He unsays all he 's said about him. 

What right could he have to berate his 
Opinions, which were given gratis, 
Or state a plausible objection 
Against his doctrine of infection ? 

O man of mineral putrefaction^* 
In spite of imps of fell detraction, 
We greet thee on our bended knees 
Great Britain's great Hippocrates. 

* O man of mineral putrefaction. 

In the famous address to which we have before referred, 
we find a most remarkable discovery of the hero of our tale, 
relative to ihe origin of " stench," which alone would entitle 
our doctor to be numbered amongst the most profound of all 
philosophers, and wliich we shall give the world in his own 
words. 

" It is too obvious to escape notice, that the stench arising 
from the hold of a ship proceeds from the putrefaction of 
substances which belong to all the three kingdoms of nature, 
vegetable, animal, and mineral .' /" 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 107 

But if Haygarthian rites infernal 
Should fail our foes to overturn all, 
Seek ways and means to lay them level, 
Without one conjurer, witch, or devil. 

If you can find some one among 
You, who don't value being hung, 
Perhaps the readiest mode would be 
To kill the conjuring patentee. 

But still I have some hesitation 
To recommend assassination ; 
Although I'm sure 'twould not be cruel, 
To pop off Perkins in a duel. 

For this you 've precedents quite ample, 
Full many a glorious example. 
From Goths and Vandals, out of temper, or 
A certain crazy Russian emperor.* 

For if the conjurer were shot dead, 
By some rude harum-scarum hot-head ; 

* A certain crazy Russian emperor^ 

Czar Paul, emperor of all the Russias, &c. who had a very 
benevolent desire to settle the disputes, which agitated Eu- 
rope, by virtue of tilt and tournament, among those poten- 
tates, whose quarrelsome dispositions so often set their 
subjects by the ears. 



108 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

Then might we quickly crush the flummery 
Of tract'riiig mischief-making mummery. 

Perkins destroy'd, the institution 
Will be o'erwhelm'd in dire confusion ; 
And we shall easily be able 
To overturn this modern Babel. 

So, if a wolf should silent creep 
T' attack by night a flock of sheep, 
He 'd not attem.pt the whole together, 
But first invade the old bell-wether.* 

Let not the thought of Jack Ketch scare ye, 
But at him like brave Mac Namara, 
Avenge our wrongs in mode as summary 
As he adopted with Montgomery. 

t But first invade the old bell-wether. 

This sublime simile, gentlemen, will meet the unequivocal 
approbation of those who are acquainted with the rustic 
manners and natural history of Kamtschatka. The leading 
wether of a flock of sheep is ever mvested with a bell, pendent 
from his neck by a collar, not only as an honorary badge of 
distinction, but for the purpose of alarming the shepherd, in 
case of invasion by any of the merciless tenants of the forest. 
The wolf always makes it his first object to silence this 
jingler, that he may with the greater impunity destroy his 
fleecy companions. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 109 

For if said Mac be crown'd with laurel, 
Who kill'd a colonel in a quarrel 
About two dogs, between two puppies, 
Most mighty sirs, my trust and hope is. 

That nobody will think it is hard 
For us to shoot a conjuring wizard, 
Since all allow, sans hesitation, 
That we 've received vast provocation. 

And if our champion 's full of fury, 
When he kills Perkins, then the jury 
(Provided they are made to fit him) 
Will most assuredly acquit him.* 

And when the foe is sent to Hades, 
Our champion will please the ladies, 
Because the pretty things delight in 
The man who kills his man in fighting. 

* Will most assuredly acquit him. 

Why not, as well as acquit Capt. Mac, who evaded all 
harm, in consequence of his not permitting the " sun to go 
down on his wrath?" Mr Justice Grose, however, appears 
to me to have proved himself to have been a very gross jus- 
tice, in telling the jury that the law does not recognise 
certain nice distinctions which are adopted by men of honor. 
If, however, his assertion be true, it is proper that there 
should be an act of parliament passed immediately, giving 
U9 GENTLEMEN the privilege of killing each other, which 
would save government the expense of hemp, hangmen, &c. 



CANTO III. 

MANIFESTO. 



ARGUMENT. 

The poet now, with Discord's clarion 
Preludes the war we mean to carry on ; 
And sends abroad a proclamation 
Against Perkinean conjuration ; 
Proves that we ought to hang the tractors, 
On gibbet high, like malefactors. 
And with them that pestiferous corps, 
Who keep alive the paltry poor ; 
By reasons sound, as e'er were taken, 
From Aristotle, Locke, or Bacon. 

But if you cannot find some one 

As bold as Attila the Hunn, 

T' attack the conjuring tractoring noddy, 

And fairly bore him through the body ; 

Collect a host of our profession, 
With all their weapons in possession ; 
And vi et armis, then we '11 push on, 
And crush Perkinean Institution. 



112 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

But first, in flaming manifesto, 
(To let John Bull and all the rest know, 
Why we should on these fellows trample, 
And make the rogues a sad example) 

Say to the public all you can say, 
Of magic spells, and necromancy ; 
That Perkins and his crew are wizards, 
Conceal'd in sanctimonious vizards. 

Say to the public all you can say, 
Of wonder-working power of fancy : 
Tell what imagination'' s force is 
In crows and infants, dogs and horses :* 

* In crows and infants, dogs and horses. 

These are among the patients whose cures are attested in 
Perkins's publication, in which he has introduced them to 
show that his tractors do not cure by an influence on the 
imagination. The fallacy of any deductions, drawn from 
such cases, in favor of the tractors, will be apparent from 
the following most learned and elaborate investigation of the 
subject. 

There are no animals in existence, I shall incontestably 
prove, that are more susceptible of impressions from imagi- 
nation, than those above mentioned. 

To begin with the crow. Strong mental faculties ever in- 
dicate a vivid imagination ; and what being, except Minerva's 
beauty, the owl, is more renowned for such faculties than the 
crow ? — Who does not know that he will smell gunpowder 
three miles, if it be in a gun, and he imagine it be intended 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 113 

Tell how their minds — but here you old men 
May trust the younkers under Coleman ; 

for his destruction ? These emblems of sagacity, besides 
*' fetching and carrying like a spaniel," and talking as well 
or better than colonel Kelly's parrot (which by the by I sus- 
pect to have been a crow) are, as Edwards assures us in his 
Natural History, " the planters of all sorts of wood and 
trees." " I observed," says he, " a great quantity of crows 
very busy at their work. I went out of my way on purpose 
to view their labor, and I found they were planting a grove 
of oaks." Vol. V. Pref. xxxv. 

These geniuses always can tell, and always have told, 
since the days of Virgil, the approach of rain. That poet 
says, 

" Turn comix plena pluviam vocat improba voce." 

They can likewise tell when bad news is approaching, as 
we learn from the same writer, 

" Ssepe sinistra cava praedixit ab ilice comix." 

Now I beg leave to know what mortal can do more ? and 
to suppose a crow not blessed with those more brilliant parts, 
under which imagination is classed, is to do them a singular 
injustice, which I shall certainly resent on every occasion. 

Now as to infants. Whoever has been in the way of an 
acquaintance with some of the more musical sort of these 
little gentry (like my seven last darlings for instance) and 
has been serenaded with the dulcet sonatas of their warbling 
strains, will not be disposed to deny their powers on the 
imagination of others. I have known the delusion practised 
so effectually by these young conjurers, that I have myself 
imagined my head was actually aching most violently, even 
on the point of cracking open ; but on going beyond the 

8 



114 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

For graduates at horses' college, 
Most certainly are men of knowledge I 



reach of their magic spell, that is, out of hearing, my head 
has been as free from pain as it necessarily must be at this 
moment, while I am penning this lucid performance. Now, 
I maintain it to be most unphilosophical, and totally opposite 
to certain new principles in ethics, which I shall establish in 
a future publication, to suppose that infants should be able 
to impart either pleasure or pain, by operating on the imag- 
ination, and not themselves possess a large share of that 
imagination, by the aid of which they operate to so much 
effect upon others. 

Next come dogs. Dt Shaw, in his Zoology, vol. i. p. 289, 
informs us, " that a dog belonging to a nobleman of the 
Medici family always attended his master's table, changed 
the plates for him, carried him his wine in a glass placed on 
a salver, without spilling the smallest drop." The celebrated 
Leibnitz mentions another, a subject of the elector of Saxony, 
who could discourse in an " intelligible manner," especially 
on " tea, coffee, and chocolate;" whether in Greek, Latin, 
German, or English, however, he has not stated ; but Dr 
Shaw, alluding to the same dog, says, undoubtedly under the 
influence of prejudice, " he was somewhat of a truant, and 
did not willingly exert his talents, being rather pressed into 
the service of literature." 

Indeed, our greatest naturalists assure us, that this animal 
is far before the human species in every ennobling quality. 
Buffon makes man a very devil compared with the dog ; and 
had he come directly to the point, I presume he would have 
told us that the dog is one link above man in the great chain 
from the fossil to the angel. " Without the dog," says 
Buffon, " how could man have been able to tame and reduce 
other animals into slavery ? To serve his own safety, it was 



TERRIBLE TRA.CT0RATION. 115 

That though imagination cures^ 
With aid of pair of patent skewers, 

necessary to make friends among ihose animals whom he 
found capable of attachment. The fruit of associating with 
the dog was the conquest and the peaceable possession of the 
earth. The dog will always preserve his empire. He reigns 
at the head of a flock, and makes himself better understood 
than the voice of the shepherd" (well he might, for it appears 
he is more knowing, more powerful, and more just.) " Safety, 
order, and discipline, are the fruits of his vigilance and 
activity. They are a people submitted to his management, 
whom he conducts and protects, and against whom he never 
employs force but for the preservation of peace and good 
order." Barr^s Buffon, vol. v. p. 302. 

It is to me somewhat remarkable that theorizing French- 
men, many of whose discoveries are scarcely less important 
than my own, cannot make them apply in such a manner as 
to effect some practical good in society. Buffon discovered 
that a dog was a species of demi-god, and appears on the 
point of worshipping this great Anubis of the Egyptians. 
Voltaire tells us, that Frenchmen are half monkey and half 
tiger, and everybody knows that the one is insufferably mis- 
chievous, and the other infinitely ferocious. Now it is sur- 
prising that these philosophers could not contrive to improve 
the breed by a little of the canine blood. Indeed, I should 
advise them to import some of our Bond street male puppies, 
to be paired with French female monkeys, and I will venture 
to assert that there will be very little of the tiger perceivable 
in their offspring. And since a dog, as Buffon says, " reigns 
with so much dignity at the head of a flock, will always 
preserve his empire, never employs force but for the preserva- 
tion oj peace and good order, '^ and is endowed with so many 
other great qualifications, which seem to denote him to be a 



116 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

Still such relief cannot be realj 
For pain itself is all ideal.* 

proper personage to wield the sceptre of dominion, I would 
seriously advise the abbe Sieyes, when he frames his 999th 
Constitution for the Jree French Republic (which it is said 
he has already begun to manufacture) so to organize the 
executive branch, that at least one of the consuls should be 
a true blooded English bull-dog. 

After the ample proof I have now given of the infinite 
superiority of the dog to man, when his merits are fairly 
estimated, which it is very difficult for us, being interested, 
to do without prejudice, I shall take it for granted, that he 
must possess all the brilliancy even of a poet's imagination, 
and therefore that he is far more likely to be cured by im- 
agination than man. 

It now remains to speak of horses, and these (not to men- 
tion the Bucephalus of Alexander, or the Pegasus of doctor 
Caustic) I shall show, in a very few words, can boast of 
performances and qualifications, to which a lively fancy in 
the comparison is but as the wit of an oyster to the wisdom 



* For pain itself is all ideal. 

So said the learned bishop Berkley, in a scientific treatise 
cjilled Principles of Human Knowledge, in which his reve- 
rence makes it apparent, to those who have a clue to his 
metaphysical labyrinth, that there is no such tiling as matter, 
entity, or sensation, distinct from the mind which perceives, 
or thinks it perceives, such ideas or substances. The bish- 
op's authority being so pat in point, I cannot but admire that 
it has not more frequently been adduced in opposition to the 
tractors. 



'tERRlBLfi TRACtORATlONi ll7 

Say that friend Davy, when he was 
Inspired with his oraculous gas, 
ijtter'd this solemn truth, that nought 
E'er had existence, only thought ! 

of a philosopher. One Of the most scientific nations thai 
ever existed, renowned alike for its refinements in the arts, 
"and prowess in war, has been compelled to yield the palm to 
the superior attainments of a horse, and acknowledge its 
inability to achieve what he most readily effected. Ten long; 
years was the whole power of Greece engaged in an ineffec^ 
tual siege of far-famed Troy. The bravest of armies, com- 
manded by heroes allied to the gods, assailed the foe in vain. 
At this disheartening period stepped forth a wooden horse^ 
and promised a victory, provided his plans were adopted ^ 
Aware of the hotse's great capacity, which enabled him to 
■comprehend a great number of subjects, the sagacious Greeks 
entered inio his measures, and Troy was levelled in the 
dust. 

If all this could have been accomplished by a wooden 
horse, none but a Perkinite will be so absurd as to pretend 
that one composed oi Jiesh and blood, like man, does no 
enjoy far greater privileges, among which are those of 
receiving as many cures by the influence of imagination as 
he pleases. 

Now then, gentlemen, I trust that if any man will con 
over, digest, comprehend, and admit this my ingenious and 
learned exposition of the fallacy of the arguments in favor 
of the tractors, so much harped upon by our adversaries, 
which are drawn from the circumstance of their having cured 
crows and infants, dogs and horses, he will with great facil- 
ity be enabled to confound and overthrow them on all occa- 
sions, provided he enforce and proclaim it with the ardency 
its importance deserves. 



118 TERRIBLE TRACTOR ATfOBT* 

What though they say, why to be sure^ 
If we by Fancy's aid can cure, 
Then why not use imagination, 
A cheap and simple operation ? 

Sat nature through her works intends 
All things to answer some great ends: 
Thus she form'd drugs to purge and shake, 
Then man, of course of those drugs to take.* 

* Then man, of course, those drugs to take. 

This capital argument, that it might make a capital 
figure, I have ordered my printer to put in capital letters, 
and I hope it will make a capital impression on 3'our wor- 
shipful intellects. But still I have not given it half that 
pre-eminence which its importance claims, under existing 
circumstances. A great hue and cry has been raised by the 
Perkinites, by which some of the less penetrating part of the 
profession have been awed into silence, respecting the duty 
of medical practitioners. They say that it is the duty of a 
medical man to employ only such means as will cure his 
patient in the most safe, cheap, and expeditious manner. 
This infamous pretension takes its origin from no other 
person than Perkins himself. That you may individually be 
aware of the effrontery with which it is brought forward, I 
shall, in this note, copy from Perkins's book his manner of 
treating the subject. Your worships will form some idea of 
the magnitude of this objection of our adversaries, in their 
own estimation, and the mischief it has already occasioned, 
not only in Great Britain, but abroad, when I inform you 
that it has been echoed in both the English and foreign 
journals, and in many of them treated as a complete refuta- 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 119 

That learriM physicians pine with hunger,* 
The while a spruce young patent-monger 

tion of the arguments of Dr Haygarth, and of all who object 
against the tractors, on account of their curing- diseases 
Merely by operating on the imagination. Among other 
foreign publications, I observe that the 21st volume of the 
Blhliotheque Britannique, printed at Geneva, closes a long 



* That learn'd physicians pine with hunger. 

No man who possesses a heart, certainly none who poS-* 
sesses bowels, can view us reduced to this deplorable con- 
dition, and hear this pathetic appeal, without the sincerest 
commisseration. The eminent services that our profession 
have rendered mankind, in contributing to avert some of the 
greatest curses that evef befel the civilized paft of the world, 
are too well known, and have been too frequently acknovsr- 
ledged to be forgotteil, ungratefully, in the day of our adver- 
sity. The testimony to this effect of the judicious, the 
humane Addison, ought often to be brought before the public 
eye. 

" We may lay it doWn as a maxim,'* says that intelligent 
writer, "that When a nation abounds with physicians it 
grows thin of people. Sir William Temple is very much 
puzzled to find out a reason why the northern hive, as he 
calls it, does not send such prodigious sWarms, and overrun 
the World With Goths and V^andals, as it did formerly : but 
had that excellent author observed that there were no stu- 
dents in physic among the subjects of Thor and Woden, and 
that this science very much flourishes in the north at pre- 
sent, he might have found a better solution for this difficulty 
than any of those he has made use of." Spectator, No. 21. 



120 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION, 

Contrives to wheedle simple ninnies, 
And tradorize away our guineas. 

account (40 pages) of " Perkinisme" with this " petite hisf- 
toire de Mr Perkins." 

" A gentleman came from the country to London, for the 
advantage of medical assistance, in a complaint of peculiar 
obstinacy and distress. After being under the care of an 
eminent physician several weeks, and paying him upwards 
of thirty guineas, without any relief, he was induced to try 
the tractors. To be short, they performed a remarkable 
cure ; the person was perfectly restored in about ten days. 
The physician, calling soon after, was informed of the cir- 
cumstance. He began lamenting that so sensible a person 
as the patient should be caught in the use of so contemptible 
a piece of quackery as the tractors. After assuring the 
patient that he had thrown av;ay his five guineas, for that it 
was well established by Dr Haygarth, that a brick-bat, 
tobacco-pipe, goose-quill, or even the bare finger, would per- 
form the same cures, he was interrupted by his patient .' 
' And are you sincere in your belief that you could have pro- 
duced, by those means, the same effects upon me, which I 
have experienced from the tractors V ' Do I believe it ? Ay, 
I know it ; and that a thousand similar cures might be effect- 
ed by means equally simple and ridiculous.' ' And sir,' 
interrupted the gentleman again, in a more stern and serious 
tone, ' why did you not cure me then, by those simple means ? 
Remember I have paid you thirty guineas, under the suppo- 
sition that you were exerting your utmost endeavors to cure 
me, and that in the most safe, cheap, and expeditious manner. 
You now, in substance, acknowledge, that, although in pos- 
session of the means of restoring me to health, for the dis- 
honorable purpose of picking my pocket, you continued me 
upon the bed of sickness ! Who turns out to be the impos- 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. l21 

That many thousand cures attested 
Show death's cold hand full oft arrested ; 
But those who from his prey would part him, 
Should manage things secundum artem. 

tor? Let your own conscience answer.' The justness of 
the retort, it will be easily believed, precluded the possibility 
of an exculpation." Perkinses New Cases, p. 145. 

Had I been the physician, however, I would have rejoined 
with arguments, not dissimilar to that which is so beauti- 
fully expressed in the above stanza. I would have told him 
that the Author of nature most certainly would not have 
created either a poisonous or salubrious vegetable, without 
intending that it should " dose and double dose" his creature 
man. 

Should it be objected that the tractors being also created 
substances ought also to be used, I could ingenuously retort, 
they were created in America, a country whose natives are 
Indians, an inferior order of beings to man, as some great 
philosophers before me have asserted, and who, it is evident ^ 
are the only order of creatures, on whom it was intended the 
tractors should be used. 

I have no particular wish to injure Dr Jenner, or I should 
positively overturn him and all his adherents with my resist- 
less arguments. If I were not willing that he should retain 
his popularity, I should make it appear that the small-pox 
was created with the intent of being universally propagated 
among the human race for the purpose of mortifying female 
vanity ; and Jenner's attempt to extirpate it, by substituting 
the cow-pox, which ought to have been confined to the quad- 
rupeds, among which it originated, as the tractors ought to 
have been to the Indians, is the extreme of presumption, and 
the height of iniquity. I cannot but conceive that our 
bishops and clergy are very remiss in not endeavoring to 
dissuade from sueh enormous, innovating practices. 



122 TERRIBLE TRACTORATIOK. 

That none should ancient customs vary, 
Nor leges physica mutare ; 
And thus, to gain a cure unlook'd for, 
The patient save^ but starve the doctor.* 

That, though the Perkinistic fellows 
May have the impudence to tell us, 
That they can muster, on emergence, 
Renown'd physicians, learned surgeons ; 

With many other men of merits 
Philanthropy and public spirit, 
Not your self-pufRng sons of vanity, 
But real Howards of humanity. 

Say that those surgeons and physicians 
Are but a conjuring set of rich ones, 

* The patient save, but starve the doctor. 

This would be abominable. Physicians, in general, ard 
a hale hearty race of men, as, indeed, must be readily con- 
ceived from their prudent maxims in regard to the preserva- 
tion of their own health : — they take no physic. No ; they 
are too well acquainted with its tendency. Now, to starve 
so sturdy and powerful a body, when his majesty is in want 
of such subjects to check the ambitious strides of restless 
Buonaparte, as appears from the king's declaration of this 
day (May the 16th, 1803,) in preference to letting their mis- 
erable patients expire, whom Providence evidently intended 
should die off, is, I trust, too absurd and unreasonable an 
idea to be admitted. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 123 

Who, having made their fortunes, therefore, 
Have very little else to care for. 

Since they Ve no interest nor right in 
The very cause for which they 're fighting, 
Such non-commission'd volunteers, 
In eye of law, are bucaniers. 

And as by law a man may fire at, 

At any time, a rascal pirate, 

So we, with justice on our side, 

May hang these rogues before they 're try'd. 

Then draw a just, but black comparison, 
Which, if they 've feelings left, will harass 'em^ 
'Twixt tractoring Perkinites, so smart, 
And other dealers in the hlack art ; 

That is, the chimney-sweepers sooty, 
Whose deeds, like Perkinites, are smutty ; 
But as they are aspiring geniuses, 
Like Perkinites, they find Mecenases.* 

* Like Perkinites, they find Mecenases. 

The Perkineans have no cause to boast of the extent of 
their patronage, for the poor tawny reptile chimney-sweepers 
have of late interested the friends of humanity in their behalf 
quite as much. Your worships will derive from this circum- 
stance a very pleasant soarce for sneering at our opponents^ 
which I am sure you will gladly embrace, whenever oppor- 
tunity presents. 



124 Terrible tractoration. 

But chimney-sweepers and Perkineans 
Are such a scurvy set of minions. 
That not one rogue among them back'd is, 
Except by knaves retired from practice.* 

* Except by knaves retired from practice* 

This, gentlemen, is a circumstance of no small momentj 
and which I trust you will see the necessity of looking at 
with some seriousness Some of our profession have, to their 
eternal disgrace, since their retirement on their fortunes, 
deserted our cause, and are now to be found in the ranks of 
our enemies. These fellows have the presumption to sug- 
gest that their duty to the interests of the community super- 
sedes that which they owe to their old brethren, the unrea* 
sonableness of which sentiment I conceive to be self-evident, 
and therefore shall not trouble myself to prove it. Several 
have even addressed to the Perkinean Institution communi- 
cations in favor of the metallic tractors, for publication, three 
of which are already laid before the public. The first on 
this list is Mr Lyster, late of Dublin, who having been above 
twenty years senior surgeon of the Dublin hospital, retired 
to Bath, where he now seems even to take delight in bene* 
fitting the mean and miserable poor, to wanton injury of his 
own dear brethren. To show the extent of his malice, he 
has, in his communicatign to the Perkinean Society, intro* 
duced statements of remarkable cures by the tractors ; among 
others one of total blindness of many years duration, in 
Vrhich all medical skill had previously failed ; and, to wind 
Up this tale of infamy, he has even ventured to censure, indi" 
rectly, my great champion, Dr Haygarth, and to hint that 
his proceedings were not accompanied with honorable inten- 
tions ! 

Next on this trio list are Mr Yatman, of Chelsea, and Df 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 125 

That though certificates he dish up, 
From surgeon, doctor, parson, bishop ; 

Fuller, of Upper Brook street ; the conduct of both of whom 
is equally, if not more reprehensible than Lysler's. These 
two also call in the lame, the halt, and the blind, and, as if 
to spite their brethren who have drugs to sell, cure them 
with the tractors without fee or reward ! Such conduct is 
so atrocious that if your worships should think prop ^r to 
have them indicted, and Mr Erskine or Mr Garrow object to 
defend the cause of such clients, I, counsellor Caustic (re- 
member I am LL. D.) will manage it for you, and, pro- 
vided I can but get that same jury which decided that captain 
Macnamara was not accessory to the death of Col. Mont- 
gomery, I will procure the defendants to be sent to Botany 
Bay, or at least as far as Coventry. 

To show the barbarity and wantonness of these two men, 
I will close this note by the following quotation from the 
letter of one of them, Dr Fuller, who, after a practice of 
nearly thirty years in medicine, and by which he has secured 
his own independence, seems now to amuse himself in under- 
mining/those of us who are still dependant. After a state- 
ment of a number of great cures by the tractors, and proving, 
by his own trials on infants, &c. that they do not act on 
imagination, which Dr Haygarth so laudably attempted to 
show, he proceeds : — "I derive much satisfaction in noticing 
among the more liberal and respectable part of my profession 
an increased favorable opinion of Perkinism, and a readiness 
to allow of its use among their patients, when proposed by 
others. To expect more than this, would be to expect more 
than human nature in its present state will admit. It must 
be an extraordinary exertion of virtue and humanity for a 
medical man, whose livelihood depends either on the sale of 
drugs, or on receiving a guinea for writing a prescription, 



1:26 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

From gentle, simple, yeomen, squires, 
'Tis written, " that all men are liars .'" 

That grant his tractors cure diseases. 
Folks ought to die just when God pleases ; 
But most of all the dirty poor. 
Who make, quoth Darwin, good manure ;* 

which must relate to those drugs, to say to his patient, 
' You had better purchase a pair of tractors to keep in your 
family ; they will cure you without the expense of my attend- 
ance, or the danger of the common medical practice.' For 
very obvious reasons, medical men must never be expected to 
recommend the use of Perkinism. The tractors must trust 
for their patronage to the enlightened and philanthropic out 
of the profession, or to medical men retired from practice, 
and who know of no other interest than the luxury of reliev- 
ing the distressed. And I do not despair of seeing the day, 
when but very few of this description as well as private 
families will be without them." If Dr Fuller were obliged 
to live in my garret one month, he would sing a different 
tune. 

* Who make, quoth Darwin, good manure. 

Besides the advantage of showing how reverently this 
great philosopher and philanthropist could speak of religion, 
I am sure I shall render an essential service to agriculturists, 
by adducing the following quotation. I bring it forward the 
more readily, as I find that the Board of Agriculture have 
been so negligent of the interest of that noble art, as not yet 
to have recommended the universal adoption of this measure. 

" There should be no burial places in churches, or church- 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 127 

That when the Russians, logger-headed, 
Were kill'd by Frenchmen, ever dreaded, 
Darwin rejoiced the filthy creatures 
Would serve for stock to make mosquitoes ;* 

yards, where the monuments of departed sinners shoulder 
God's altar and pollute his holy places with dead men's 
bones. But proper burial places should be consecrated out 
of towns, and divided into two compartments, the earth 
from one of which, saturated with animal decomposition, 
should be taken away once in ten or twenty years for the 
purposes of agriculture, and sand or clay, or less fertile soil 
brought into its place." Darwin's Phytologia, p. 242. 

Here your worships will perceive that there is a prospect, 
if this advice is followed, that we may enjoy the privilege of 
eating, instead of drinking our friends, which would be 
something of an improvement on our idea, communicated in 
page 58. 

* Would serve for stock to make mosquitoes. 

Among other speculations also in the cause of humanity, 
bequeathed us by tliis friend of man, are the following, 
which will prove a great consolation to those who have 
foolishly supposed that the bloodshed and devastation, pro- 
duced by war, were circumstances which ought to be la- 
mented. 

These remarks are published by Dr Darwin, as written 
under his own observations in the manuscript of his book, 
by a ^^philosophical friend," whom he left in his library. It 
is supposed, however, that the doctor wrote them himself. 
At least the sentiments have his sanction. 

" It consoles me to find, as I contemplate the whole of 
organized nature, that it is not in the power of any one per- 



128 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

And also urges with propriety, 
That war 's no evil in society ; 
But has a charming operation, 
To check excess of population. 

" Superfluous myriads from the earth 
Are swept by pestilence and dearth ;"* 

gonage, whether statesman or hero, to produce by his ill 
employed activity, so much misery as might have been sup- 
posed. Thus, if a Russian army, in these insane times, 
after having endured a laborious march of many hundred 
miles, is destroyed by a French army, in defence of their 
republic, Avhat has happened ? Forty thousand human crea- 
tures, dragged from their homes and connexions, cease to 
exist, and have manured the earth ; but the quantity of or- 
ganized matter, of which they were composed, presently 
revives in the forms of millions of microscopic animals, 
vegetables, and insects, and afterwards of quadrupeds and 
men ; the sum of whose happiness is, perhaps, greater than 
ohat of the harrassed soldier, by whose destruction they have 
gained their existence ! Is not this a consoling idea to a 
mind of universal sympathy ? I fear you will think me a 
misanthrope, but I assure you a contrary sensation dwells in 
my bosom ; and though I commisserate the evils of all 
organized beings, " Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienutn 
puio.'^ Phytologia, p. 558. 

* Are swept by pestilence and dearth. 

Last words of Dr Darwin. I take no small credit to myself, 
for being one of the first to bring into notice the latest and the 
most sublime of this sublime philosopher's sublime specula- 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 129 

Which drive his philosophic plan on, 
As well as blunderbuss or cannon ; 

That, in this world's great slaughter-house, 
Not only sheep and calves and cows, 

lions. The fountain from which this radiant stream of 
illumination flows is denominated, among booksellers, The 
Temple of Nature. 

To paint all the writer's conceptions of the mansion of that 
old lady, and her own most singular qualifications, would be 
a task even beyond the abilities of a Caustic. Mr Fuseli, 
however, has pxinted his conceptions on the occasion, which 
in one of his designs, appear, so far as I can comprehend 
him, to be simply these : — In his frontispiece to the work, 
he represents one beautiful lady pointing at, or rather fumb- 
ling about, (somewhat indecently, I must confess) a middle 
or third breast of another beautiful lady, whom I suppose to 
be Dame Nature ; 

Than which there 's nothing can be apter 
To fill philosophers with rapture. 

This third breast I take to be the painter's emblem of the 
discoveries of Dr Darwin — implying that their existence is 
as evident as that a woman has three breasts. But, not to 
digress ; the doctor ascertains that 

*' Human progenies, if unrestrain'd, 
By climate friended, and by food sustained 
O'er seas and soils prolific hordes would spread 
Ere long, and deluge their terraqueous bed . 
But war and pestilence, disease and dearth 
Sweep the superfluous myriads from the earth." 

Temple oj" Nature, Canto iv. 
9 



130 TERRIBLE TRACTOR ATI OI*. 

But " man erect, with thought elate," 
Must " f/uc/c" to death his stubborn pate ^* 

That in said butcher's shop, the weakest 
Should always be kill'd off the quickest,. 
Because Dame Nature gave the strongest 
The right and power to live the longest ; 

Some tmphilosophical theorists have foolishly supposed 
that this sweeping plan of Dr Darwin, which that philoso- 
pher appears to have introduced, lest " prolific hordes" should 
" deluge their terraqueous beds," might as well be deferred 
till a few of the " superfluous" acres on the earth's surface 
were reduced to a state of cultivation. I should advise to- 
employ these supernumeraries in navigating polar ices withia 
the tropics, as recommended by the doctor in the Botanic- 
Garden, were 1 not apprehensive lest I should thereby in 
some measure, destroy the operation of Saint Pierre's tides. 
See note on page 70, Canto i. 

* Must " duck" to death his stubborn pate. 

More last words of Dr Darwin. 

" The brow of man erect, with thought elate, 
Ducks to the mandate of resistless fate." 

Temple of Nature, Canto iv. 

f have exhibited this couplet at all the assemblages of 
poetizing brethren in Grub street and St Giles's, not omit- 
ting the inhabitants of the " Wits' corner, at the Chapter 
coffee-house, the e/e?7a^ef/ tenants of the cider cellar in Maiden 
Lane, and Col. Hanger's knights of the round table," all of 
whom agree in acknowledging the elegance and correctness 
of the metaphor, and that its beauties are so transcendently 
exquisite, and beyond the ken of mortal eye, as to be per- 
iectly incomprehensible. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 131 

That since "to die is but to sleep,"* 
And poor, diseased, are scabby sheep. 
That none need care a single button 
If we should make them all dead mutton ; 

That death is but a trivial thing, 
Because a toadstool, or a king, 
Will, after death, be sure to rise 
In bats and bed-bugs, fleas and flies.f 

* That since " to die is but to sleep." 

" Long o'er the wrecks of lovely life they weep ; 
Then pleased reflect, to die is but to sleep." 

Temple of Nature, Canto ii, 

I suspect that my intimate friend and correspondent Buo- 
naparte, is a full concert to Dr Darwin's doctrine of death 
and its consequences. For, when he declared to lord Whit- 
worth his determination to invade England, although there 
were a hundred chances to one in favor of his going to the 
bottom, he was undoubtedly calculating on a comfortable nap 
after the fatigues of government. 

t In bats and bed-bugs, fleas and flies. 

" Thus, when a monarch or a mushroom dies, 
Awhile extinct the organic matter lies ; 
But, as a few short hours or years revolve, 
Alchymic powers the changing mass dissolve ; 
Born to new life unnumber'd insects pant," &c. 

Temple of Nature, Canto iv. 

It has been a matter of curious inquiry among some of 
my corresponding garreters, whether this philosopher him- 



132 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

Besides, they '11 make, when kill'd in fight, 
Vast " monuments of past delight ;"* 
And that to think of is more pleasant, 
Than such delight enjoy'd at present. 

self, in the latter stages of his existence, enjoyed much con- 
solation from reflecting that the "organic matter" which 
entered into his own composition, was about to be employed 
for the important purpose of giving " new life" to " unnum- 
bered insects." 

* Vast "monuments of past delight." 

" Thus the tall mountains, that emboss'd the lands, 
Huge isles of rock, and continents of sands, 
Whose dim extent eludes the inquiring sight, 
Are mighty monuments of past delight." 

These " monuments of past delight," Darwin says, 

" Rose from the wrecks of animal or herb." 

Thus taught by this wondrous sage, I trust the friend to 
humanity will suppose it best to let the poor, infirm and 
decrepid die off as fast as possible, to " manure the earth," 
that the quantity of organized matter of which they were 
composed, may revire in the forms of millions of microscopic 
animals, vegetables and insects, make " monuments of past 
delight," &c. Therefore it is to be hoped, that the promoters 
of the Perkinean institution will prove as despicable in re- 
spect to numbers, as they are deficient in understanding, 
especially in comprehending the great and glorious truths of 
modem philosophy. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 133 

Then no Darwinian philosopher, 
His conduct can contrive to gloss over, 
And make it with his tenets tally, 
Unless he round our standard rally, 

And join in strenuous endeavor / 

The wretch's thread of fate to sever. 
That having met their final doom, 
They may have rest, we — elbow room.* 

* They may have rest, we — elbow room. 

If your worships have not read Mr Malthus's Essay on 
the Principles of Population, I advise you to buy the book 
immediately, and set yourselves about something like an 
effort to comprehend its contents. You will there find, I 
cannot now recollect the page, that population has a tendency 
to increase in a geometrical ratio, but l\idii subsistence must be 
limited to an arithmetical ratio. That the world would soon 
swarm with inhabitants in such a manner that in years of 
the greatest plenty we should be under the disagreeable 
necessity of turning anthropophagi, and, like the famous 
Pantagruel, eat pilgrims with our salad, were not the princi- 
ple of population restrained by two very useful predominant 
principles, viz. " vice and misery ;" the former of which is 
happily exemplified in the extravagance and luxury of your 
worships, and the latter correctly expressed in the poverty of 
your worships' petitioner. You will likewise find m the 
same volume, passim, that after war, pestilence, and famine 
have laid waste a country, there is an immediate increase of 
births, in consequence of the principle of population being 
let loose to take its natural operation in replenishing the 
earth ; or, in other words, because there is more elbow room 



134 TERRIBLE TRACTORATroJT.. 

Say that the deepest politicians 

Will join their powers with us physicians ^ 

Assist to overset the flummery 

Of Perkins* mischief-making mummery, 

Nor suffer tractoriiig rogues to cure 
Such sordid shoals of paltry poor, 
Of whom it truly may be said, 
That they were ten times better dead. 

For when the old Nick comes and fetches? 
Away the dirty set of wretches, 
Times will improve, because, the fact is, 
^T will lessen poor rates, worst of taxes* 

Say that those wights of skill surprising 
In science of economizing, 
Who cook up most delicious farings, 
From cheese rinds^ and potato parings^ 

Will thank us when this paltry band 
Are " kill'4 ofF,'^ to manure the land ; 

for the survivers. Now, this being^ correct reasoning, if 
must be wonderfully wroiig to try to keep alive poor folks, 
Who are a dead weight on population, destroy the means of 
subsistence, prevent early marriages, and, by keeping them* 
selves^ above grOufld, strtii iu the way of their betters. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 135 

And they will make, I ween, besides, 
Morocco leatiier fronri their hides ; 

And so contrive that every coffin, 
Which serves to lug a dead rogue off in^ 
Shall answer, if it be not made ill, 
For living child, a clever cradle. 

And though they say, on man and horse, 
The tractors act with equal force ; 
Still some among us can get through it, 
And swear old Satan helps him do it ! 

In proof of tractoring defection 
Proclaim that wise and learn'd objection, 
The famous argument, so handy, 
About their modus operandi. 

That a physician should neglect 
To notice e'en a good effect. 
Unless the cause, as he supposes. 
Is nine times plainer than his nose is ; 

And though it may be urg'd by some, 
That this grave reasoning's all a hum, 
Because the learn'd are in the dark 
How opium, nsercury, acts, and bark, 



]86 TERRIBLE TRACTORATIOP*. 

To such reply you '11 make no answers,, 
For much I question if you can, sirs; 
But rather for retort uncivil. 
The poker take and lay them level.* 

* The poker take and lay them leveh 

Please not imagine that I would be understood to recom- 
mend this " retort courteous" in the most unqualified sense, 
or that it be exercised on every occasion. On the contrary, 
the due performance of it will require no small degree of 
prudence and discretion. Indeed, I would have you use the 
poker, or any other violent and weighty arguments of this 
kind, only when your antagonist happens to be a woman, a 
child, or some debilitated and cowardly wretch who will sub- 
mit without any chance of your meeting with unpleasant 
resistance. 

As to the justice of this mode of response, there exists no 
doubt, and therefore dread no decisions in Jbro conscientice, 
because the extreme heinousness of your adversaries' provo- 
cation will appear from the following consideration. To 
deprive you of an argument, for which you have sacrificed 
everything dear to obtain, must, confessedly be regarded as 
a most outrageous proceeding. Now, this is exactly the 
case in the present instance ; for in your attempt to show 
that medical men believe and trust in no medicine, the modus 
operandi of which they do not comprehend, you make a 
sacrifice of truth, decency, and common sense, the full reward 
of which sacrifice you ought to enjoy unmolested. That no 
man can explain how mercury poisons, bark cures an 
intermittent fever, or opium produces sleep, is confessed by 
every medical author ; and that all these should be used in 
our practice, without any hesitation, I never heard any per- 
son deny, and for this proper and substantial reason ; their 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 137 

From Haygarth, borrowing a rare hint, 
Tell how these tractors, 't is apparent, 
The most insidious thing in nature, 
Will e'en beivitch the operator /* 

administration is profitable to the faculty. I have therefore 
to repeat, that when the Perkinites complain of your reject- 
ing the use of tractors, because their modus operandi cannot 
be entirely explained, although you adopt the use of drugs, 
the operation of which is equally or more inexplicable, your 
sacrifice in support of your ground is so great, that whoever 
attempts to drive you from such ground deserves to be laid 
low with the first weapon that comes to hand. 

* Will e'en bewitch the operator. 

No part of the learned doctor's management, in the anti- 
Perkinistic cause, merits higher eulogy than this most ra- 
tional explanation of that most irrational practice. So 
cogently does an innate principle of equity control me, that I 
am absolutely coerced to offer, at the shrine of the heroic 
doctor, my tributary dole of the incense of admiration, for 
having presented our profession such a powerful knock-me- 
down argument, wherewith to buffet the common enemy. 

The sagacious doctor having published a scientific treatise 
against the tractors, demonstrating that " they act on the 
patienVs imagination," Perkins, came cut in reply, with all 
the fury of an Irish rebel, and declared that the doctor de- 
served to be trounced for not suffering his readers to know, 
that the tractors pretended to cure infants and brute animals, 
though numerous cases to that effect had then been published ; 
and in that reply proclaimed that Dr H, purposely endea- 
vored to suppress such facts, that he might, with greater 
facility, induce the public to swallow the deductions drawn 



138 TERRIBLE TRACTORA.TION. 

Will break down reason's feeble fences, 
And play the deuce with our five senses 



from his magical manoeuvres in the Bath and Bristol hospi- 
tals. Now, admitting the doctor managed in this way, I am 
sure he was perfectly right in so doing. The end in view, 
according to established principles of modern morality, will 
ever justify the means taken to accomplish that end. In 
this case, the end in view was most important — nothing less 
than the downfal of Perkinism, and the consequent aggran- 
dizement of our profession. Should any of our opponents 
be so captious as to assert, that such principles and such 
motives of action should not be encouraged in society — that 
they have a pernicious tendency, and other nonsense of that 
sort, I must take the liberty to refer them to the first consul 
of the French republic, whose conduct has ever been mod- 
elled according to the principles above stated, and who is 
certainly the most powerful logician of the age, perfectly 
able to confound those who shut their eyes against the light 
of conviction. 

But to revert to the doctor's treatise, and Perkins's impu- 
dent replication. The man who could raise the very old 
gentleman himself, by the legitimate powers of necromancy, 
was not so easily defeated. Accordingly he returns to the 
charge in another edition — admits the existence of the 
numerous cases on infants, horses, &c. but laj-s them all 
level with the following unanswerable argument. — " The 
proselytes of Perkinism having been driven from every other 
argument, hare, as a last resource, alleged that the patent 
metallic tractors have removed the disorders of infants and 
horses. Even this^imsy pretence is capable of a satisfac- 
tory refutation. In these cases it is not the patient, but the 
observer, who is deceived by his own imagination ! ! !" See 
Hal/garth's book, page 40. Mirabile didu ! 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 



139 



And acts a part, so very scurvy, 
They turn a man's brains topsy turvy ! 

Will so bewilder and astound one, 
They make a lame horse seem a sound one! 
Appear, with but three legs to wag on, 
A Pegasus, or flying dragon I ! 

Then quote his lady's ecchymosis,* " 
Which rose an inch from where her nose is ; 

* Then quote his lady's ecchymosis. 

The celebrated stofy of the lady's ecchymosis comes hand- 
ed down to your Worships by five successive reporters. The 
lady incog-, who makes so conspicuous a figure in Dr Hay- 
garth's narration, told another lady, who told a medical 
friend of Dr H. who told Dr Caustic, who tells your worships 
this important anecdote. Now, as " in the multitude of 
counsellors there is safety," so in a multitude of reporters 
there is certaintrj. But to the story; which I shall give in 
the language of Dr H.'s medical friend aforesaid. 

" A lady informed me, that a lady of her acquaintance, 
Who had great faith in the efficacy of the tractors, om seeing 
a small ecchymosis, about the size of a silver penny, at the 
corner of the eye, desired to try on it the effect of her favor- 
ite remedy. The lady, who was intended to be the subject 
of the trial, consented, and the other lady produced the 
instruments, and, after drawing them four or five times over 
the spot, declared that it changed to a paler color; and on 
repeating the use of them a few minutes longer, that it had 
almost vanished, and was scarcely visible, and departed in 
high triumph at her success. I was assured by the lady 



140 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

And was not bigger much, if any, 
He states, than puny " silver penny." 

who underwent the operation, that she looked in the glass 
immediately after, and that not the least visible alteration 
had taken place ! !" (From Hayg-arth's book, page 40.) 

I had determined to exert my influence in all the medical 
societies, that the above case be read at the opening of each 
meeting, until there should not be left of the tractors, in this 
island, " a wreck behind." But a far better plan of Dr H. 
himself has precluded the necessity of this measure, which 
was to announce in all the advertisements of his book in the 
public papers, that " it explains why the disorders of infants 
and horses are said to have been cured by the tractors." See 
his daily advertisements in the papers. 

Indeed, I am at a loss which to admire most, the pretty 
fanciful relation above cited, which is all the new edition of 
the doctor's treatise against the tractors contains to justify 
the assertion in the advertisements before mentioned, or his 
singular skill in constructing such a fabric on this foundation. 
Did I possess the talents of the doctor in the advertising 
department, I should announce this my pithy performance to 
the public, by publishing in all the papers, that the price of 
the tractors was, in consequence of Dr Caustic's opposition, 
fallen to the price of old iron, and Perkins's pamphlets hav- 
ing been proscribed by physicians, were condemned, and 
actually burnt by the hangman on execution-day, at the Old 
Bailey, in the presence of every mdividual of the college of 
physicians, and half the citizens of London. 

I would beg leave to add to this incomparable Haygarthian 
demonstration an argument of my own, which I think is not 
less powerful. It is impossible that these tractors should 
perform any real cure, as they act solely on the imag-ination 
either of the patient or the operator. But cures performed 
by the power of imagination must be imaginary cures, that 
is, no cures at all. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. ' 141 

Twas then assail'd, with courage liearty, 
By juggling wench of Perkins' party, 
And soon, to her beconjured eyes, 
It seemed a thousandth part its size. 

** And now," quoth she, " I scarce can view it. 
These tractors are the things that do it ; 
Oh, la! I vow, it's taken flight, 
And vanish'd fairly out of sight." 

But madam Hoaxhoax, in her glass, 
Beholding what it truly was, 
Exclaim'd "my last new wig I'll burn up, 
If 't is not bigger than a turnip ! ! !" 

In public papers, more 's his glor}^ 
The doctor advertised this story ; 
And you '11 confound the tractoring folks 
By Haygarth's tale of lady Hoax.* 

* By Haygarth's tale of lady Hoax. 

It is not true, as some sagacious coffee-house politicians 
have asserted, that madame Hoax (or more correctly double 
Hoax) is the wife of a Chinese Mandarin, settled on the 
mountains of the Moon, in Abyssinia, for the purpose of 
ascertaining the influence of imagination in the cure of dis- 
eases. No, gentlemen, she is a baroness of true English 
breed, more sturdy than a Semiramis, a Penthesilea, or a 
Joan of Arc, and will prove, in our cause, a championess of 



142 TERRIBUC TRACTORATIOJS. 

Tell one more tale from ancient sages^ 
About the wonderous chain of ages, 
Gold, silver^ brass, but not a link. 
Composed of copper, or of zinc. 

pre-eminent prowess. Should your worships wish for fur- 
ther acquaintance with this lady, which in my opinion would 
be for your mutual advantage, you will take the trouble to 
inquire at my garret. No. 299, Dyot street, St Giles's (having 
removed from my former place of residence, third floor, 327, 
Grub street, with a view of being nearer my friend, Sir 
Joseph, in Soho square) and her address shall be at your 
service. 

I am now preparing a most awful tragedy for Drury lane 
theatre (Mr Sheridan's approbation being already obtained) 
to be entitled and called, the Dreadful Downfal of 
Terrible Tractorizing Co>i5'ovnded Conjuration ; in 
which I propose to introduce a new song, that I have no 
doubt will be so celebrated as to be the theme of every ballad- 
singer in the metropolis. I cannot forbear anticipating some 
small share of that applause, which I have reason to suppose 
will be piled on Dr Caustic, as soon as he is publicly known; 
as the author of such an inimitable production, by obliging 
your worships with a part of the chorus to the song afore- 
said. 

Come now let us coax 
Haygarth and Dame Hoax, 
Like true hearts of oaks, 
To crack off their jokes. 
While dreading their strokes, 
Those sheep-hearted folks, 
The tractoring Perkinites, quiver ; 



TERRIBLE TRiLCTORATION, 143 

That, as it ever was the curse 

Ot* man to go from bad to worse, 

This age (the thought might e'en distract lis) 

Is that of vile metallic tractors ! 

That your last sixpence you will bet all. 
Ages will follow of worse metal. 
Unless this wickedness you stop, 
To sweepings of a black-smith's shop 1 

Say that the devil never fails* 
To eat a tiger, stufF'd with nails ; 

O may they with knocks, 

" And shivering shocks," 

Pound their jackets and frocks, 
' Till dead as horse-blocks, 

(O what a sad box !) 

They 're thrown into the docks, 
Or, just like dead cats, in the river I 

This song is to be set to music by Mr Kelly in his very 
best style of pathos, sublimity, and crotchets, and to be de- 
lightfully demi-semi-quavered to the admiring audience by 
Mrs Billington. Then, if box, pit, and gallery, should not, 
una voce, Nick Bottom-like, cry, " Encore ! Encore ! Let 
her roar ! Let her roar ! Once more, once more ! Let the 
squeak and the squall be swelled to a bawl, Dr Caustic 
will find the door ! Find the door ! And never go there any 
more ! ! 

* Say that the devil never fails. 
This stanza contains a legendary tale, which I dare say is 
as true, as that which commemorates a notable exploit of Si 



144 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

With claws and head and hair on, munching 
The savage creature at a luncheon I 

That one old woman, pain distracted, 
This part of satan over acted ; 
In gulping tractors down, for med'cines,* 
With such effect, that faith she 's dead since. 

Then make it plain, by quoting Greek, 
That this old hag, of whom we speak. 
More brass and iron took in one day, 
Than satan all the week, with Sunday. 

But should the public turn deaf ear to 't 
Tell them that I know who will swear to 't 

Dunstan in seizing old satan, one dark night in the tenth 
century, and wringing the nose of his infernal majesty with 
a pair of red-hot blacksmith's pincers, which made him roar 
and scold at such a rate, that he awakened and terrified all 
the good people of Glastenbury and its neighborhood. 

* In gulping tractors down, for med'cines. 

An old lady of my acquaintance was actually advised by 
an ingenious son of Galen, an apothecary, resident a few 
miles north of London, to swallow tractors for an internal 
complaint. If our profession were to follow this laudable 
example, and force their patients to swallow them for pills, 
and then give the public a judicious detail of the terrible 
consequences, ending with the death of the patients, Perkin- 
ism would sink into that contempt in the estimation of the 
public which it justly deserves. 



TERRIBLE TRA.CTORATION. 145 

And testify the whole affair 
Before his honor, the lord mayor! 

Say Perkinism was begotten 

In wilds where science ne'er was thought on,* 

* In wilds where science ne'er was thought on. 

That is, in the United Slates of America, among Indians 
and Yankees. Vou will find, gentlemen, much to the pur- 
pose relative to the state of science, where Perkinism origi- 
nated, in the Monthly Magazine, of January, 1803, under the 
title of " Animadversions on the present state of literature 
and taste in the United States, communicated by an English 
gentleman lately returned from America." This gentleman 
gives information that the Americans are wretchedly " behind- 
hand in science with the Britains.^' Indeed, those transat- 
lantic younkers ought, in half a century, to have established 
universities and other seminaries of learning, at least as old 
and respectable as those of Oxford and Cambridge, and 
which should have graduated as many students and produced 
as many great men. As to the parsimonious spirit of Ameri- 
cans in encouraging science (which this gentleman animad- 
verts upon with laudable indignation) it ought truly to be 
exclaimed against by us Englishmen, for the weighty reason 
following : Great Britain, " from time whereof the memory 
of man runneth not to the contrary" (as judge Blackstone 
says) hath starved some of her first poets ; such for instance 
as Butler, Otway, Chatterton, Dryden, Savage, &c. &c. &c. 
&c. consequently (according to the same author) she ought 
to enjoy the exclusive " customary privilege'^ of inflicting the 
horrors of starvation on the sons of the muses : but it must 
be granted, for the honor of British munificence, that the 
scientific Herschel, in the decline of life, as a reward for 
10 



146 TERRIBLE TRACTORATIOIf, 

And had its birth and education 
Quite at the fag end of creation! 

For raree-show, to England smuggled, 
That honest christians, all bejuggled, 
Might tamely suffer B. D. Perkins 
To pick the pockets of their jerkins. 

Say it was twinii'd with monstrous mammoth,* 
And to go near it you 'd be d — d loth,f 

immortalizing his present majesty, by inscribing Georgium 
Sidus in the great folio of the heavens, is allowed the enor- 
mous pension of 80l. per annum ! ! 

This instance of liberality, in rewarding merit, has caused 
me 10 suspend my animadversions relative to patronage 
afforded men of real science in Great Britain, till I can dis- 
cover whether it be the absolute determination of my coun- 
trymen to starve doctor Caustic. 

* Say it was twinn'd with mdnstrous mammoth. 

And must, of course, be a most terrible wild beast. — 
Ladies and gentlemen may form a tolerable idea of the 
enormity of Perkinism, by viewing the skeleton of a mam- 
moth now exhibiting in Pall Mall, in the very place where 
lately were to be seen those terrible caricatures of the devil, 
&c. under the appellation of Fuseli's Milton Gallery. 

t And to go near it you 'd be d — d loth. 

This manifesto, you will please to recollect, is the lan- 
guage of gentlemen physicians. Now it is well known that 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 147 

r 

Because it always eats poor sinners, 
As I eat bread and cheese for dinners ! 

Say that it is ^^monstrum horrendum !'^ 
As great a plague as God could send 'em. 
Moreover, 'tis ^^informe ingens /" 
Brought up among the western Indians : 

Go on then ; " lumen cui ademptum," 
A worse thing satau never dreamt on ; 
And sure your worships cannot urge ill, 
Such classic matter — -all from Virgil. 



Although the slightest scintillation, 

Of your terrific indignation, 

Should cause the foe to topple under, 

Like rotten gate-posts struck with thunder 



,. « 



Although that pity would be folly, 
Which checks said thunder in mid volley, 

you possess a privilege, sanctioned by long and invariable 
practice, if not founded on act of parliament, to enforce your 
sentiments by certain energetic expressions, which, in the 
mouths of people of less consequence, would be considered 
as very vulgar, and nearly allied to profane swearing-. And 
since your worships ever most manfully exercise this privilege 
to the full extent of its limits, the present manifesto would 
have been extremely inapposite and unnatural, had not an 
ornament of this kind been introduced. 



148 TERRIBLE TRACTORATIOW. 

Or intercepts annihilation 

From foresaid refuse of creation — 

'T is possible the rebel rout 
May rashly strive to stand it out ; 
And therefore we will next disclose 
How to proceed from words to blows. 



tJAiVTO IV. 

C^RAND ATTACK 



ARGUMENT. 

Great Caustic, finding logic sound, 
*rhe conjuring crew will not confound, 
Like an indignant hero blusters, 
The MIGHTY ROYAL COLLEGE mustcrs ; 
Joins to your worships' powerful phalanx 
" Death-doing" quacks, and men of all ranks I 
A bolder, and more desperate host. 
Than Jacobinic France can boast ; 
Then marches to o'erturn and knock dead 
Each tractoring Perkinistic blockhead ; 
Their institution next attacking, 
He sends them all to Satan — packing ! 

Our 'foresaid manifesto first done, 
Which shows our cause a good and just one; 
The boldest sons of Galen call on,* 
That they with fire and fury fall on ! 

* The boldest sons of Galen call on. 

1 say the boldest ; for we cannot rely on the aid of the 
whole Esculapian phalanx. Many white-livered dastards, 
who disgrace our profession, have shown a disposition to 
remain neuter, or fight under Perkinean banners ! 



150 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

Sound Discord's jarring tocsin louder, 
Than Howard's fulminating powder:* 

* Than Howard's fulminating powder. 

It is a long time since the public have had any reports from 
the honorable Mr Howard's fulminating powder, which, 
three years since, made so much noise, that the world had 
reason to expect that the thunderiferous chymist would 
make no more of exploding to old Nick a whole army of 
Frenchmen, with Buonaparte at its head, than would a cock- 
ney sportsman of shooting a tame goose on the first of 
September. 

Whether this mighty affair is all blown up, or what may 
have been the cause of the silence of those who defended a 
thing which so loudly proclaimed its own merits, it becomes 
Mr Howard to explain. 

Of this he may be assured, if he do not stir his slumps in 
order to fulfil some of the fair promises which he and his 
friends have made to the Royal Society and the public, of 
the astonishing achievements they were about to perform, by 
the demi-omnipotent power of his new invented artificial 
thunder, I hereby give the alarming intelligence that I will 
apply my own superior talents to this sonorous subject. 
Should that happen, those laurels which were designed to 
decorate the brow of Mr Howard will be tied in a bow-knot 
round my venerable temples. For, in that case, the learned 
chymist's acquisitions, in the art of intonation, will bear no 
better comparison to those of Dr Caustic, than the clattering 
wagon-wheels of Salmoneus to the world-astounding thun- 
derbolts of Jupiter. No person can doubt my being able to 
accomplish all this, who is apprized, as he may be from 
perusing this performance, of the vast quantity of the most 
detonating kind of mercury which exists in my composition, 
and which vfiW fulminate with greater effect, than the gold 
and silver that line the magnipotent purse of the honorable 
the heir apparent to the duke of Norfolk. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION, 151 



Then into battle like brave men go, 
Who late were "kill'd off," at Marengo.* 

But choose a chief before you start, 
A bully bold as Buonapart' ; 
And to make sure of well succeeding. 
Another chap like Charles of Sweden. 



* " Kill'd off," at Marengo. 

I have several times taken a confounded deal of trouble to 
haul into my poem tliis beautiful specimen of parliamentary 
elocution ; and, in my opinion, nothing can be better imag' 
ined, or more happily accomplished. Poetry and oratory, as 
the ancients inform us, were both whelped at one litter ; con- 
sequently the same phrase which glittered in the harangue 
of my bull-bailing friend, William Windham, a British sen- 
ator, cannot fail to cut a dash in the stanza of his seraphical 
friend, Christopher Caustic, a British poet. 

Now, as I am a great admirer of French principles, and 
that new and accomodating kind of morality, by Frenchmen 
discovered, and which I ever have and ever will eulogize, to 
the utmost extent of my faculties, perhaps your worships will 
express no small degree of wonderment why I should be the 
intimate friend of a gentleman, the blaze of whose oratory, one 
would suppose, would have blasted Buonaparte, and even 
singed the whole French'republic. But those who are admit- 
ted behind the political curtain will perceive .that the tendency 
of the measures which Mr Windham supports is io promote 
those Jacobinic principles, of which Dr Caustic openly and 
Iwnestly professes himself to be the determined propagator 
and defender. 



152 TERRIBLE TRACTORATIOW. 

Step forth thou potent prince of puffers I 
Thou modern Hercules of Huffers! 
Whose name, as Sternhold used to say, 
Will ring « for ever — and a day ;" 

For thou canst sound (a thing the oddest, 

Since an arch quaker should be modest, 

And never meddle with a strumpet*) 

Thine own great name on Fame's brass trumpet. 

And soon that name's continuous roar 
Shall roll sublime from shore to shore ; 
Among th' antipodes, be known. 
And hlaze through either //-ozen zone.f 

* And never meddle with a strumpet. 

Su'ely, no person will imagine that I would, for the world, 
allude to any other lady than madam Fame herself. 

+ And hlaze through either Jroz en zone. 

I have very substantial reasons for spreading glad tidings 
of our redoubtable chieftain among the most distant inhabi- 
tants of the globe, in preference to endeavoring to add to his 
great celebrity " within the periphery of his associates." 
And, whereas it has been said that this gentleman's reputa- 
tion will ever stand highest where he is either not known at 
all, or known only by those literary productions, in which he 
is himself the theme of his own most " ardent praise," mine 
shall be the humble task of trumpeting the doctor's name 
among the distant inhabitants of this dirty planet ; while the 
doctor shall himself " dip his pen in ethereal and indelible 
ink, and impress his observations in characters legible in the 
great volume of the heavens." 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 153 

No more shall merciless reviewers, 
Stick full of satire's savage skewers 
The mighty chief of whom I 'm boasting, 
As one would spit a goose for roasting.* 

* As one would spit a goose for roasting. 

True it Is, though "passing strange," that a ^rea^ and 
good man, composed, as he himself can attest, of the very 
essence of humanity, is often most vilely, most audaciouslj'^, 
and most atrociously bespattered by a set of saucy reviewers. 

Those wicked wits, the writers in the Monthly and Critical 
Reviews, especially the latter, in a critique on one of the 
late works of a certain doctor of self puffing memory, tells 
us that " the importance of a man to himself was never 
more conspicuous than in this publication. Dr Lettsom 
admits that he has been anticipated by several distinguished 
authors ; but modestly hints that some uf his particular 
friends will form no opinion [respecting the cow-pox] till 
they have ascertained his sentiments." They then have the 
audacity to declare, that " he merits no slight punishment 
for his pompous inflated language, for his fulsome flattery, 
and ridiculous exaggeration of every part of the subject." 

See how they speak of a late publication of the doctor on 
certain charitable institutions : — " Unless to connect these 
different institutions, to lead the different radii to a centre, 
while that centre is the author and the editor, who can boast, 
Q,ucB ipse misserima vidi, et quorum pars magna fui ! we 
see little advantage in this edition. We mean not to intimate 
the slightest disapprobation of these institutions, or of 
humanity in general ; but when we see pomp and egotism 
assuming its garb, when' vanity and ostentation occasionally 
peep from beneath the robe, we feel no little disgust from 
comparing the fascinating exterior with the unpleasing con- 



154 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

For should they raise with dire misprision, 
'Gainst thee one finger in derision ; 
This right hand rudest doggrel's club in, 
Shall give the knaves a dreadful drubbing. 

But thou, the leader of our throng, 

Shalt glitter in a future song, 

Which I intend to raise sonorous, 

And quack! quack!! quack!!! shall be the chorus. 

Then, had I money, I would bet some. 
And faith I'll do it {when I get some) 
One half a guinea, sirs (a net sum) 
They '11 fall before great doctor Lettsom.* 

tents," &c. They likewise have the impudence to assert 
that some of the doctor's plans are " better suited to the 
superstition of a Hindoo, than to the nature of a rational 
christian." And in another review they declare : " We mean 
not to stoop to any ; but will tell Dr Lettsom his faults" 
[consummate assurance ! !] " as well as any other author ; 
nor will we conceal that mean mark of a little mind, over- 
weening vanity. We saw it in its germ, have watched its 
opening bud, till it is expanded into its blossom. The 

literary life of Dr L may well be styled the progress 

of vanity : the termination is yet to come : but we have 
ample materials for the subject." See Monthly Review^ of 
July, and Critical Review, of Sept. 1802, and Feb. 1803. 

* They '11 fall before great doctor Lettsom. 

I resolved to recommend your arranging yourselves under 
the banners of this Leviathan of the Galenical throng, from 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 155 

Thou too, famed knight of horrid figure I 
With wig than bushel-basket bigger ; 

the moment I first heard of his noble and spirited sally 
against the tractors. Disdaining the wretched trammels of 
why and wherefore, and without assigning those paltry trifles, 
called reasons, for his opinions, on the merits of Perkinism, 
our intrepid commander determined to extirpate it root and 
branch, with his simple ipse dixit. This is what we ought 
to expect from a hero of such prowess. See how well h6 
manages these metallic makers of mischief! In a eulogium 
(a very agreeable thing to a modest man during his life time) 
on his friend Dr Haygartb, contained in the work which 
those wicked reviewers above mentioned have treated so 
irreverently, he mentions (page 277) the " important object," 
which Dr Haygarth has so " happily effected.^'' This is 
" arresting and subduing- two poisons, the most fatal to the 
human race (fever and small-pox) and unveiling imposture, 
clothed in the meretricious garb of bold quackery :" a note 
on the word " imposture," in the margin says, " Experiments 
on metallic tractors." Now, unless I can borrow the pen of 
the learned doctor, dipped in " ethereal and indelible ink,'^ 
and a whole literary apparatus in proportion, I shall never 
be able to express how much I admire the matter above 
quoted, on account of the important intcllig&nce therein con- 
tained. Before Dr L. asserted it, I dare say not an individ- 
ual in the kingdom knew that Dr Haygarth had " effected'^ 
such au, " important object," that fever and small-pox were 
subdued, altogether extinct, despoiled of that venom which has 
hitherto " brought death into the world," and so much wo. 
But true it is, they are quite extirpated, and all this by Dr 
Haygarth ! ! One cannot but exclaim against the perverse- 
ness of those members of parliament, who, regardless of this 
Tiews from Dr L. voted a reward to Dr Jenner for his services' 



156 TERRIBLE TRACTORATIOW. 

Which, in its orbit vast, contains, 
At least a thimble full of brains ; 

Come on, with lion heart, like Hector, 
And phiz resembling monkey's spectre ; 
Prepare the batteries of thy journal,* 
To blast with infamy eternal. 

in subduing- the small-pox, and to Dr Smith, for his discoV' 
eries in subduing contagious fevers. In short, I am almost 
ready to enforce the charge of ignorance against my brethren 
in the profession ; for I have not yet met with one possessed 
of sufficient penetration to see, that neither fever nor small- 
pox " has a local habitation and a name among us," and that 
they have been both " subdued,''^ and all this " effected,^^ by 
Dr Haygarth ! 

* Prepare the batteries of thy journal. 

Here I can, with certainty, calculate on the most powerful 

co-operation. This , what shall I call it ? This official 

Gazette of the profession — this Medico-Chymico-Comico- 
Repository, for the effiisions of self-puffers, prescribing rules 
and recipes, 

" How best to fill his purse, and thin the town ;" 

this powerful instrument of offensive and defensive warfare, 
has ever, with becoming vigilance, guarded its post against 
Perkinean invaders, and suffered no occasion to pass with- 
out a squirt of the Gallic acid of satire, when there was 
deemed a possibility of blackening the common enemy. 

I can never sufficiently express my approbation of the 
Carthagenian cunning with which this journal has been con- 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 157 

In medical societies pour 
Forth all thy wonted learned lore : 
Tell the vile deeds by quackery done, 
By every nostrum, save thine own.* 

dacted. Dr B. professing great impartiality, in an early 
number, (see vol. ii. p. 85) invited communications on the 
subject of the tractors. Subsequent management evidently 
showed a slight omission in the doctor's notice, and that he 
meant communications on one side only ; for he has omitted 
no pains to procure and publish whatsoever could be sug- 
gested against the tractors ; but though reports of cases in 
their favor, and all the publications of the patentee have 
been before him, not a syllable of these was ever noticed by 
that gentleman ; neither has it ever appeared by his journal 
that such facts ever existed. 

* By every nostrum, save thine own. 

I appeal to any of my brethren who have been gratified, as 
I often have been, with the Demosthenes-like torrent which 
has been so frequently poured forth, in our medical societies, 
by this "child and champion" of the Galenical throng, 
against quackery and all its appurtenances, whether it were 
fair to surmise, as some unconscionable rogues have done, 
that Dr B. has absolutely himself become the proprietor of 
a quack medicine. The fire of eloquence with which Per- 
kinism, that most atrocious kind of quackery, has been so 
frequently, and so efiectually assailed by the learned doctor 
at the medical society, at Guy's, the Lyceum Medico Londi- 
nensis, &c. &c. &c. ought to have ensured Dr B. so much of 
the gratitude of the profession, that, although he should 
himself cYioo&e. to become one of the most arrant quacks in 
the kingdom, he might depend on your support of his repu- 



158 TERRIBLE TRACTOR ATI OW. 

For thou didst play the hero rarely, 
At Westminster, when routed fairly ; 

tation, and your exertions to uphold him. No subsequent 
apostacy on his part, I maintain, will justify a dereliction of 
him. 

Recal to your recollection, gentlemen, the denunciations 
he has so often made against every medical practitioner who 
should presume, either directly or indirectly, to offer any pa- 
tronage to remedies which bore even the most distant resem- 
blance to a nostrum. How often have the walls of the 
medical theatres of Saint Thomas's hospital, and Windmill 
street, echoed loud responses to his declamations against the 
varlets, who should dare to recommend means, in the profits 
of the consumption of which the whole profession could not 
participate ? How often have you received his invitations 
to send him 5'our effusions and declamations against quack- 
ery, to receive an efficient publicati^ in his journal? and 
what number of that journal has appeared without perform- 
ing his promise, by honoring those effusions with a place in 
its immortal pages ? 

Lest even these most important considerations should still 
find you inexorable, I trust I can show, by examining his 
conduct in regard to the quack medicine in question, that, if 
it be not praise-worthy, it is, at least, defensible. 

The title of the nostrum which has had the assistance of 
Dr B. in being introduced to the notice of a grateful public, 
is " A NEW MEDICINE FOR THE GOUT." The pretended dis- 
coverer of this specific is, for very commendable, or, which 
is the same thing, very prudent reasons, kept behind, the 
curtain. I wish, however, to express my utter disbelief that 
either Dr Brodum or Dr Solomon is the happy mortal, how- 
ever similar the style of the pamphlet, announcing this new 
medicine, may be to their erudite writings, and the preten- 
sions of the said medicine to " balms of Gilead" and to 
" nervous cordials." 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 159 

Thy genius show'd such vast resources, 
"^Gamst Belgraves, Colquhouiis, Wilberforces !* 

Though hunted down, thou would'st not yield ; 
Though trodden on, didst keep the field. 
Thus Witherington, in doleful dumps, 
For lack of legs, fought stout on stumps ! 

And could'st thou, pertinacious Bradley, 
But maul these mutton heads most sadly. 
Soon might thy wig (the people staring) 
All in a chariot take an airing !f 

* 'Gainst Belgraves, Colquhouns, Wilberforces ! 

What business had these fellows to intrude their noses 
into the concerns of the Westminster infirmary ? Brother 
B. had an undoubted right to manage, or mismantige, the 
funds of a medical institution, as best suited his own con- 
venience, without their troublesome interference. 

t All in a char|ot take an airing. 

I hereby enter a protest against any one of my commentators, 
whether he be Vanscanderdigindich the elder, or Hansvans- 
hognosuch, his cousin German (two Dutch geniuses, who 
have promised to furnish the next edition of this my pithy 
poem with a whole ass-load of annotations) or any other 
gentlemen critics or reviewers of equal profoundity, presum- 
ing to intimate, that I intend, by this passage, the smallest 
disrespect to your pedestrian physicians. Far from that ; I 
know that many good and great men (like myself for exam- 
ple) cannot even pay a shilling for hackney-coach hire. No, 
gentlemen ; I have two great objects in view, to wit : 



160 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION, 

Led on by chieftains so redoubted, 
These vile Perkineans must be routed ; 

1. To encourage my brother B — to persevere in his lauda- 
ble attempt to kick Perkinism back to the country whence it 
originated, by reminding him, that if the feat were once 
performed, he might, perhaps, soon afford the expense of a 
chariot to transport, in a respectable manner, all that wig, 
without laying the entire burden on the curious sconce it 
now envelopes. 

2. To remind brother B — , and the profession in general, 
how much more execution may be done by a charioteer than 
by a pedestrian physician. 

Although great men frequently differ, I am happy to find 
Mr Addison's opinion and mine, in this particular, perfectly 
consentaneous. 

" This body of men," says he, speaking of physicians in 
our own country, " may be described like the British army in 
Caesar's lime. Some slay in chariots, and some on foot. If 
the infantry do less execution than the charioteers, it is 
because they cannot be carried, so soon, into all parts of the 
town, and despatch so much business in so short a time." 
Spectator, No. 21. 

Not an individual, I will venture to assert, who knows my 
brother B — , but must feel the really urgent necessity of 
elevating him, as soon as possible, from lepave and giving 
those talents their full swing-. Then, indeed, soon might 
our charioteer justly boast — 

" London, with all her passing bells, can tell, 
By this right arm what mighty numbers fell. 
Whilst others meanly ask'd whole months to slay, 
I oft despatch'd the patient in a day. 
With pen in hand, I push'd to that degree, 
I scarce had left a wretch to give a fee. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION, 161 

Then, if in future people be sick, 
They '11 worship us, the gods of physic. 

Why stand ye now, like drones, astounded. 
The weapons of your warfare grounded ? 
Arm'd cap-a-pe, like heroes rush on. 
And crush this reptile institution. 

But first, to make the bigger bluster, 
Join every quack that you can muster, 
Some place in rear, and some in front on, 
From Brodum down to gaseous Thornton.* 

Some fell by laudanum, and some by steel, 
And death in ambush lay in every pill ; 
For save, or slay, this privilege we claim, 
Though credit suffers, the reward 's the same." 

* From Brodum down to gaseous Thornton. 

I am fully sensible that many of my brethren, of less dis- 
cernment than myself, would have assigned this famous 
little genius a rank on the empirical list even above Dr 
Brodum. Making puffing their criterion, they will argue 
that those acute half-guinea paragraphs which we occasion- 
ally see at the fag end of the Times and other morning 
papers, respecting that "very learned physician," — his 
^^ great discoveries, and improvements in the medical appli- 
cation of the gases," — his "grand national and botanical 
work," and fifty others of the same strain, asserting the high 
claims of this airy writer on the gratitude of the public, are 
incontestible proofs of his superior merits in the puffing 
11 



362 TERRIBLE TRACTORATIGH*^ 

Now, when the foe you first get sight on,: 
Shout CA IRA, and then rush right on ; 
And make as terrible a racket, 
As ever did a woman's clack yet, 



department, which, say they, are some of the most necessary 
ingredients in the formation of a charlatan. All this is 
specious reasoning ; but I trust I shall show its fallacy. Pre- 
eminence, in my opinion, must be founded on some intrinsic 
excellence, original and independent of adventitious circum- 
stances. If we closely examine the merits of this candidate, 
we shall find that there can be no great claim on this score. 
Let any man enjoy the faculties and advantages of a general 
dealer in the airs, who must of course have piiffs of all 
descriptions at hand ; and where is the merit of occasionally 
letting of one? 

If there be anything like originality in this industrious 
little philosopher, and for the invention of which I should be' 
inclined to allow him the credit of ingenuity, it consists in 
his meritometer, which proposes to measure the merits of hiS' 
fellow creatures by the degree of faith they can afford to 
bestow on the infallibility of his gases as a panacea. See 
his plan of this instrument, or rather the deductions drawn 
from his trials of it, in his large five volume compUation of 
^' Extracts,^' vol. i. page 459. From this scale it appears, 
that of one thousand of mankind nine hundred and ninety- 
nine are either fools or knaves, as that proportion places do 
confidence in the efficacy of his catholicon. I hope, there- 
fore, after the good reasons here assigned for my conduct, I 
shall not be suspected of partiality to Dr Brodum in retaining 
him at the head of the quacks, nor ill will to Dr T. for not 
calling him up higher on the list. 



I'ERRIBLS TRACTORATION. 163 

l^or should you sound a loud alarum, 
Perhaps you may so sadly scare 'em, 
Like frighted sheep, they '11 huddle right in 
The Old Nick's den, without much fighting. 

Just so a gang of Indian savages. 

When they set out to make great ravages. 

With war-whoop fright their foes (God help *em) 

And then proceed to kill and scalp 'em. 

Prudence, by Doctor Caustic's test, 
A sneaking virtue is at best, 
Then drive ahead by hook and crook, 
Like lions, leap before you look. 

But stop, ere further we proceed. 

To set forth every mighty deed. 

We must exchange (tho' horror stiffen ye) 

Our Clio for a fell Tisiphone ! 

For when -we So these wretches batter, 
'Twill be no water gruel matter; 
And you '11 agree then, I assure ye, 
Our muse is well changed for a fury. 

Thou sprite ! thou hag ! thou witch ! thou spectre! 
; J^'riend Southey'g crony and protector : 



164 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

Who led the bard, with Joan of Arc, 
Through death's deep, dreary, dungeon dark t 

Until ye were, I dare be bound. 
Near half a mile down under ground ; 
Mid screeching ghosts and dragons dreadful, 
As e'er filled dreaming madman's head full !■ 

And, after mighty perils past, 
On Terra Firma, got at last. 
Didst dub thy jacobin toad eater 
The "Thalaba" of English metre.* 

* The Thalaba of English metre. 

Mr Southey, in his work with the title of " Thalaba orr 
the Destroyer," has given us a fine example of a pleasing 
dreadful performance, which is neither prose, rhyme, nor 
reason. Indeed, nothing but the inspiration of the gas which; 
we have seen him inliale in the first canto, could have gene- 
rated the following efiiisions. 

*• A Teraph stood against the cavern side, 

A new born infanVs head. 
That Khawla at his hour of death had seized,, 

And from the shoulders wrung. 
It stood upon a plate of gold. 
An unclean spirit's name inscribed beneath : 
The cheeks were deathy dark, 
Dark the dead skin upon the hairless skull ; 

The lips were hluey pale ; 

Only the eyes had life, 

They gleamed with demon light." Book ii^ 



TERHIBLE TRACTORATIOJC. 165 

And set the bard to brew a mess 
Of horror in a wilderness. 

Again he towers in Book v. 

" There where the narrowing chasm 
Rose loftier in the hill, 

Stood Zohak, wretched man, condemned to keep 
His cave of punishment. 
His was the frequent scream 
Which far away the prowling Chacal heard, 
And howled in terror back. 
Far from his shoulders grew 
Two snakes of monster size 
That ever at his head 

Aimed eager their keen teeth 
To satiate raving hunger with his brain. 
He in the eternal conflict oft would seize 
Their swelling necks, and in his giant grasp 
Bruise ihem, and rend their flesh with bloody nails, 

And howl for agony 
Feeling the pangs he gave, for of himself 
Inseparable parts his torturers grew." 

Now, if in this age of turmoils your worships should have 
^occasion to educate a school of assassins, to be employed as 
Talleyrand employs his agents, for the purpose of promoting 
modem philanthropy and French projects of universal em- 
pire, I should advise you to prepare them intellectual food 
from such descriptions as we have quoted above. By accus- 
toming your pupils to meditate on such horrible descriptions 
you will soon enable them to inflict without compunction or 
remorse, sufferings like those, which they have been in the 
habit of contemplating. 

We are sorry to see, however, that our friend, Dr Darwin, 



166 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

So wondrous horrible, indeed it 
Might make one faint away to read it I 

Thence sent him under " rooted waves'*^ 
Adown through vast Domdaniel caves,* 

has been pleased to express his disapprobation of this species 
of the terrible in style, without which your small poets can 
never become conspicuous. We shall, however, quote one 
of his sentiments on the subject merely to let the world know 
that we great wits do not always tally upon every point. 

The doctor tells us in his Botanic Garden, p. 115, that 
there is a " line of boundary between the tragic and the 
horrid ; which line, however, will veer a little this way or 
that, according to the prevailing manners of the age or 
country, and the peculiar association of ideas, or idiosyncrasy 
of mind, of individuals." 

Now I am apprehensive that doctor Darwin would have 
adjudged the greater part of Mr Southey's sublimity to be of 
the *' horrid'^ rather than the tragic or svblime kind. Such 
aa opinion, however, would not only greatly tarnish the 
reputation of the critic who should venture to pronounce it,. 
but would entirely put down many pretty good poets, who, 
as the Edinburgh reviewers say, must have a '•' quHl mourut,^^ 
and a " let there be light" in every line ; and all their 
characters must be in agonies and ecstacies, from their 
enl ranee to their exit.* 

* Adown through vast Domdaniel caves. 

That is, as Southey says, through the Domdaniel caves, 
" at the roots of the ocean." 

* See Edinburgh Review of Southey's Thalaba, October, 1802. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 167 

In which the metre man and Thalaba, 
Had like to have been lost infallibly : 

But were translated in a trice 
To monsieur Mahomet's paradise,* 
There to enjoy, with Houri-ladies, 
A whole eternity of play days. 

Thalaba, having leaped into a " little car" which appears 
to have been drawn by " four Uving pinions, headless, body- 
less, sprung from one stem that branched below, in four 
down arching limbs, and clenched the earrings endlong and 
aside, with claws of griffin grasp ; " 

*^Down — down, it sank — down — down — 
Down — down — a mighty depth ; — 
Down — down — and now it strikes." 

There's the bathos to perfection ! Now, if we could in 
■any way have prevailed on Mr Southey to have stopped this 
side of the centre of gravity, we should have been happy to 
have hired his " car" for this our dreadful rencontre. But as 
it appears that the Domdaniel cave soon after ybZZ in, I fancy 
it would cost more to dig out this vehicle than to get Mr 
Southey to make us a new one. 

* To monsieur Mahomet's paradise. 

** Thalaba knew that his death-hour was come, 
And on he leapt, and springing up, 
Into the idol's heart 
Hilt deep he drove the sword. 
The ocean-vault fell in, and all were crushed. 

In the same moment at the gate 
Of paradise, Oneiza's Houri-form, 

Welcomed her husband to eternal bliss." 



168 TERRIBLE TRACTOR ATIOIf. 

Give me in proper tone to tell. 
Between a mutter and a yell, 
How best our fierce avenging choler 
May do dire deeds of doleful dolor. 



Come on ! Begin the grand attack 

With aloes, squills, and ipacac ; 

And then with clyster-pipe and squirt-gun,- 

There will be monstrous deal of hurt done T 

Each wry-faced rogue, and dirty trollop. 
Must well be dosed with drastic jalap. 
And though their insides you should call up^ 
Still make the numskulls take it all up. 

Cram all the ninny-hammers*^ gullets, 
With pills as big as pistol bullets ; 
And mingle mercury enough 
To season well your doctor's stuff. 

Dash at them escharotics gnawing, 
Their carcases to pick a flaw in ; 
Of nitrous acid huge carboys. 
Filled to the brim, like Margate hoys. 

Thus when the Greeks with their commander, 
That fighting fellow, Alexander, 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 169 

Set out one morning, full of ire, 
To take and burn the town of Tyre ; 

A patriotic stout old woman 
Looked out, and saw the chaps a coming ; 
When on a sudden she bethought her 
To heat a kettle full of water ; 

And as they went to climb the ladder, 
(Sure never vixen could be madder, 
But so the historian of the fray says) 
She fired her water in their faces ! 

But to return to our great battle ; 
Now rant ! rave ! roar ! and rend ! and rattle !* 
Like earth-born giants when they strove. 
To pull the ears of thundering Jove ! 

Pelt the vile foe with weapons missile ; 
Make vials round their sconces whistle ; 
Shower on them a tremendous torrent, 
Of gallipots and bottles horrent. 

* Now rant ! rave ! roar ! and rend ! and rattle. 

I Christopher Caustic, censured by critics, for my apt 
alliterations, though artfully allied, yet presume it is policy 
for a jaennyless poet to polish his puny lays to such a pitch 
of perfection, that posterity may please to place the pithy 
production paramount to the peaked point of the pinnicle of 
Pierian Parnassus. 



J 70 TERRIBLE TRACTOR ATION, 

Make at 'em now like mad Mendozas ; 
With forceps pinch and pull their noses, 
With tourniquet and dire tooth-drawers, 
First gird their necks, then break both jaws. 

But lo ! they bid our dread alliance 
Of doctors, quacks, and drugs defiance ; 
And, firm as host of cavaliers, 
Convert their tractors into <^pears ! 

See host to h.ost and man to man set ! 
A tractor each, and each a lancet ! 
Each meets his foe, so fierce attacks him! 
That sure some god or demon backs him ! 

Fell Ate's shriek the world alarms ! 
Bellona bellows "arms ! to arms !" 
War's demon dire, a great red dragon, 
Drives, Jehu-like, Death's iron wagon ! !* 

* Drives, Jehu-like, Death's iron wagon ! ! 

A poet of less judgment than myself would have seated 
Mars in the chariot of Victory, a Vauxhall car, or some 
other flimsy vehicle of that kind, which would be sure to be 
dashed to pieces in a conflict like this in which we are at 
present engaged. The carriage here introduced was made 
by Vulcan, in his best style of workmanship, for the express 
purpose of this attack, and in point of strength and size, 
bears no more proportion to the chariot commonly used by 
the god of war, than one of those huge broad-wheeled Man- 
chester wagons to the little whalebone thingamy which the 
duke of Q,ueensbury ran at New Market. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 171 

Loud shouts and dismal yells arise ! 
Rend the blue ** blanket" of the skies !* 
Grim Horror's scream and Fury's frantic 
Howl might be heard across the Atlantic ! ! 

Although a comet's tail should hap 

To give our globe a fatal slap, 

The " crush of worlds" and " wreck of matter" 

Would make ten thousand times less clatter ! 

Thus high in air two different kinds 
Of monsieur Volney's warring winds 
Commence a most impetuous battle, 
And round the Blue Ridge make all rattle.f 

* Rend the blue " blanket" of the skies. 

This is the same " blanket" which Mr Canning said was 
" wet" when he exhibited it in the House of Commons. Since 
his use of it on that occasion it has been so frequently wrung 
by the wits, that it has now become a perfectly dry and 
almost thread-bare article. 

t And round the Blue Ridge make all rattle. 

Volney informs us in his View that the Alleghany moun' 
tain is the frontier on which the south-west and north-west 
winds in America contend ; and that he beheld a spectacle 
of that kind at Rockfish Gap, on the Blue Ridge. See 
American edition, page 148. 



172 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION, 

Loud, loud ihey bellow, blow and bluster, 
With all the power that all can muster ; 
Harsh hurtle, howl, and hiss, but neither 
Will yield his foe an inch of ether. 

Now to the wretches give no quarter, 
Pound them in indignation's mortar ; 
Let not the women nor the men chance 
To 'scape the pestle of your vengeance ! 

Make cerebrum and cerebellum, 
To rattle like a roll of vellum. 
And occiput of every numhead, 
To sound as loud as kettle-drum head. 

With fell trepaning perforator, 
Pierce every puppy's paltry pate, or 
With chissel plied with might and main, 
Punch a huge hole in pericrane. 

And with a most tremendous process, 
With power of elephant's proboscis. 
At once crush dura, pia mater. 
As one would mash a boil'd potato ! 

Pelt, pulverize the rogues with shocks 
Like those from moon-disploded rocks, 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 173 

Sent from that mischief-making planet, 
Huge, hissing hot, and hard as granite.* 

* Huge, hissing hot, and hard as granite. 

It is to me a matter of doubt whether your worships are 
not absolutely ignorant of the causes and efiects of the won- 
derful phenomena to which we now allude. But if you will 
please to take with us a stand for observation, exactly at the 
centre of gravity between the earth and the moon, and look 
about you with the eyes of great philosophers you will per- 
ceive what is well worth a world of admiration. 

You will perceive that what is vulgarly called the man in 
the moon is a prodigious volcano, in size much superior to 
any on our globe, and that this volcano is continually emit- 
ting rocks, which ever and anon are thrown beyond the 
sphere of the moon's attraction, and of course make their 
way down upon us. 

You will likewise find, by turning to the second volume of 
the Philadelphia Literary Magazine, page 389, an account of 
above thirty difierent showers of stones, some of which have 
weighed not less than 300 pounds. And you will ascertain 
that there has been a great diversity of opinions among phi- 
losophers respecting the origin of these prodigies. Some 
have believed them to be thrown from some neighboring vol- 
cano. Some have thought them to have been wafted about by 
hurricanes. Others have supposed them to have been concre- 
tions formed in the atmosphere. Some have thought them 
to be masses which were detached from the planets at the 
time of the formation ; and that they have been floating about 
in infinite space till they met with our earth, which became 
to them a new centre of gravity. 

But the truth is, as you may see through any common 
optical tube, from the situation to which I have just had the 
honor to conduct you, that these masses of matter are the 
product of lunar volcanos. Here we have a cause adequate 



174 TERRIBLE TRACTORAtlON. 

Now, with harsh afnputating saw^ 
Slash frontal os from under jaw ; 

to the effect, as I shall make evident in the follo\fring fe^ 
words. 

A lunar volcano similar to those on our planet would 
project bodies much further from the moon than they would 
be thrown by the same force from Etna or Vesuvius ; for, 

1. It is grEinted by great philosophers, such as ourselfajid 
Dr Darwin, that the moon has no atmosphere ; of conse-' 
quence, a body exploded from the moon would meet with no 
resistance excepting from the power of gravitation. Dr Dar- 
win informs us, Botanic (jrarden, canto ii. " If the moon had 
no atmosphere at the time of its elevation from the earth ; 
or if its atmosphere was afterwards stolen from it by the 
earth's attraction, the water on the moon would rise quickly 
into vapor ; and the cold produced by a certain quantity of 
this evaporation would congeal the remainder of it. Hence 
it is not probable that the moon is at present inhabited ; but 
as it seems to have suffered and to continue to suffer much by 
volcanos, a sufficient quantity of air may in process of time 
be generated to produce an atmosphere, wlxich may prevent 
its heat from so easily escaping, and its water from so easily 
evaporating, and thence become fit for the production of veg- 
etables and animals. 

"That the moon possesses little or no atmosphere is 
deduced from the undiminished lustre of the stars at the 
instant when they emerge from behind her disk. That the 
ocean of the moon is frozen is confirmed from there being na 
appearance of lunar tides," &c. 

2. Bodies on the moon possess much less gravity in pro- 
portion to their quantity of matter than bodies on the surface 
of the earth ; for matter is attracted by the earth and moon, 
respectively, in proportion to the quantity of matter which 
each contains. It follows that a comparatively slight im- 
pulse, communicated to a body on the moon's surface, would 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 175 

And make a wound, by cutting slant down, 
For doctor Tasker to descant on.* 

Attack Medulla, hight Spinalis, 

From where the head to where the tail is ;f 

he sufficient to counteract its attraction towards the moon, 
a.nd if it were propelled towards the earth it might come 
within its attraction, and would of course make its way to 
our planet. 

Thus it appears very evident, even to persons of your 
worships' ordinary penetration, that these wonderful showers 
of stones are of lunar origin. 

* For doctor Tasker to descant on. 

I feel a very great solicitude to mould and modify every 
part and parcel of this performance according to rules and 
regulations of the best master-builders of epic poems, trag- 
edies, and other great things of that kind. The judicious 
critic will perceive that all my wounds are inflicted with 
anatomical accuracy, and I have no doubt but my friend Dr 
Haygarth will do himself the honor to write a treatise upon 
this subject, and tell the world with what terrible propriety 
we have hewed and hacked our opponents in the field of 
battle. The reverend William Tasker, A. B. has furnished 
a model of this species of criticism in A Series of Letters, 
respecting " The Anatomical Knowledge of Homer," &c. 
Dr Haygarth I expect will prove that the " death wounds" 
of Sarpedon, Hector, Ulysses' dog, &c. as displayed in the 
treatise of Dr Tasker, were mere flea bites compared with 
these of Dr Caustic- 

t From where the head to where the tail is. 

Or more correctly where the tail was. Lord Monboddo 
tells us that men, as well as monkies, were formerly digni- 



176 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

Till every bone displays a fracture 
Of scientific manufacture. 

Thus Virgil tells of sturdy fellows, 
Dares ycleped, and old Entellus, 
Who, with a pair of iron mittens, 
Attack'd each other, like true Britons. 

Entellus, stout as Hob the giant. 
Made horrid work, you may rely on 't ; 
Exceeding mightiest verse or prose deed, 
Knock'd out two teeth, and made his nose bleed ! 

And now, with desperate trocar, 
Urge on the dreadful " tug of war ;" 
And, having punch'd them in the crop, say 
You meant to tap them for the dropsy. 

fied with long tails protruding from the place where (accord- 
ing to Butler) honor is lodged. Philosophers and antiquaries 
had never been able to discover how man became divested 
of this ornament, till my friend, Dr Anderson, furnished a 
clue to the mystery. From this discovery I am led to sup- 
pose that your antediluvian bucks began the practice of cur- 
tail-ing these excrescences for gentility's sake, and what was 
at first artificial became in due time natural, till, at length, 
your right tipples, as in modern times, were entirely disen- 
cumbered of that monkey-like appendage ; but our Bond- 
street loungers, although divested of that exterior mark of 
the monkey, with a laudable desire to prevent the intentions 
of Nature from being defeated, have adopted all the ourang- 
outang-ical airs which she originally designed should dis- 
criminate that species of animals from man. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 177 

With burning lapis inferualis,* 
Convince them human nature frail is ; 

* With burning lapis infernalis. 

The use of this caustic and other escharotics on thiis 
momentous occasion reminds me of an important era in my 
life, a succinct biograpoical sketch of which I shall shortly 
publish, in nineteen volumes folio; a work which, in point 
of size, erudition, and interesting anecdote, will be immensely 
preferable to the voluminous production of lord Or ford. 

The event in question w"as of the greater consequence, as 
it gave rise to the present family name of " Caustic." 

Just thirtytwo years since, from the fourteenth day of last 
July, while I was prosecuting some of my chymical researches, 
my eldest son Tom, a burly-faced boy, since killed in a duel 
with a hot-headed Irish gentleman, overturned a bench on 
which Were placed seven carboys full of acids, alkalies, 
&c. and broke them into inch pieces. The consequences of 
this accident may be more easily conceived than described. 
The whole neighborhood was alarmed, and many most ter- 
ribly causticized in endeavoring to extinguish the conflagra- 
tion which ensued. In the consternation, and amid the 
exertions to subdue it, some one cried out that Dr Crichton 
(for such was my former name, being the lineal descendant 
from the celebrated " admirable Crichton") is fairly a Dr 
Caustic. 

Thus began my honorary name, of which, as it is scientific, 
I am not a little proud, especially as it was acquired by vir- 
tue of an explosion, similar to that which gave the honorary 
appellation of Bronte to my friend, viscount Nelson of the 
Nile. For further particulars respecting this important 
event, you will please to inquire at the Herald's college, 
where, I dare say, " garter principal king at arms," sir Isaac 
Heard, knt. has done me the justice to register the occur- 
12 



178 TERRIBLE TRACTORATIOW. 

And taunting, tell them they 're afflicted, 
Because they are to sin addicted. 

rence. Instead of lions, hulls, boars, camels, elephants, and 
such insignificant animalcuIcB, my shield is decorated with 
insignia more appropriate to my great pretensions. On the 
left are seen broken carboys couchant, implying that the 
secrets of science lie prostrate before me. On the right are 
fumes rampant, indicative of my discoveries, which soar 
above those of all other pretenders. In the centre are nine 
hedgehogs, with quills, stickant, a happy emblem of my 
peaceable disposition. 

My motto, wliich I trust sir Isaac has also registered, is 
worthy of notice. Dr Darwin was much pleased with it, 
and, desirous to emulate my fame in the art of motto making, 
made " omnia e conchis." But your worships Avill perceive 
that the doctor's motto bears no comparison with mine, in 
point of erudition ; as I prove myself versed in three lan- 
guages; whereas he can boast of only one. Here it comes. 

O av-&Q()}JTogf or ?/ yuij; 
Lacessit never me impune ! ! 

This, my beautiful and appropriate motto, for the sake of 
accomodatmg those among your v/orships, who are not 
versed in the lore of Greece and Rome, and cannot afford to 
subsidize men of erudition to officiate for you in that depart- 
ment of science, I shall render into our vernacular idiom, as 
follows : 

If I' m attack'd by man or trollop 

I '11 dose the knave with drastic jalap. 

Lest the more critical and polite reader should complain, 
that in order to let myself down to the level of your worship- 
ful capacities, I have anglicized my sublime motto in too 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 179 

With scalprum scrape off epidermis 
And cuticle (I tliink the term is) 

vulgar and colloquial a style, I shall take the liberty, politely, 
to parodize thereon, and, as lord Bacon says, " to bring it 
home to men's business and bosoms ;" that is, to make the 
application to that particular kind of gentry, against whom 
my hedgehog quills, aforesaid, are pointed in terrorem. 

Ladies and gentlemen, reviewers ! 

You are a set of mischief brewers ; 

A gang of scandalous backbiters, 

Who feast on us, poor murder'd writers. 

Now if you dare to throw the gauntlet, 

I tell you honestly I sha'n't let 

Your impudences, with impunity, 

Impose in future on community. 

If you dare say that greater wit 

Than doctor Caustic ever writ ; 

If you dare venture to suggest 

His every word is not the best ; 

If you dare hint that Caustic's noddle 

Is not improved from Homer's model ; 

If you dare think he has not treble 

The inspiration of a Sybil ; 

If 5'ou don't seem to take delight 

In puffing him with all your might ; 

If you don't coin for him some proper lies 

To circulate through this metropolis. 

To give eclat to this edition 

Of his Poetical Petition ; 

If you don't sing the same tune o'er 

Which he himself has sung before, 

Ancients and moderns, altogether, 

Are but the shadow of a feather. 



180 TERRIBLE TRACTORATIOIT, 

And all the nerves and muscles various. 
Because, say you, their bones, are carious. 

Thus rocks of primitive creation 
Are worn down by disintegration, 
Until the mountain mass is brought 
To 99 times less than 0, ' 

And when reduced to that condition. 
By some additional attrition, 
They furnish, b}' their aggregation. 
The pabulum of vegetation. 

With aniimonials make them sweat away ; 
Cram each snout full of asafcetida: 
Then tell them that their case you fancied 
Required some castor oi}, so rancid. 

And though the drug seem somewhat balefu! 
Give each a dose of half a pailful ; 
Then thank them not to make wry faces. 
For mild cathartics suit their cases. 

Dash at them nitrate, hight argentum, 
And tell them, though it does torment 'em 

Compared with Caustic, even as 
A puff of hydrogenous gas, 
He '11 hurl ye to old Davy's grotto, 
As you '11 imagine from his motto. 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 181 

That papists say that purgatory 
Is but a passport iuto glory. 

Thus monsieur Satan was quite merry,* 
When erst, in Heaven, he raised old Harry ; 
With jokes and cannon, in terrortm, 
ilush'd on and drove 'em ali before him. 

Stick your keen penetrating probes 
Tlirougli right and left hepatic lobes; 
And though you pierce the diaphragm, 
You need not care a single >d — n. 

So Indians, wlieM a captive 's taken, 
And they resolve to fry his bacon, 
Their savage torture to refine, 
First stick him full of splinter'd pine. 

* Thns monsieur Satan, was quite merry. 

So said Milton, Paradise Lost, B. vi. where the hero of 
the poem (whom I would propose as a model for your wor- 
ships' imilation on all occasions) and his merry companions 
^' in gamesome mood stand scoffing," and " quips cranks," 
powder, grape shot, puns, Itlunderbuss, jokes, „.id cannon- 
balls, flash, roar, and bellow in concert. 

But I am sure that every candid critic will be divsposed to 
acknowledge that neither Homer nor Milton ever described 
a battle, fraught with such sublime images and similes, as 
this in which we are so desperately engaged. 



J 82 TERRIBLE TRACTORATIOK* 

Dissect a rogue or two alive, 
For thus your worships may contrive 
To trace the vital springs in action 
Of nature's movements to a fraction. 

In fine, your worships will contrive 
To leave not one vile wretch alive, 
Except those dirty sols of witches, 
Whom nature meant to dig in ditches. 

But all who would not make most topping' 
Fellows to work in docks at VVapping, 
Some way or other, sirs, I'd have ye 
Give a quick passport to old Davy. 

But if with all this blaod and thunder, 
The stubborn blockheads won^t knock under, 
And e^en old women bravely wield 
Their jordans like Achilles' shield j 

No more with these our v/eapons dabble, 
But raise a Lord-George-Gordon rabble j 
Pour on the rogues, that they be undone, 
The whole mobocracy of London ! 

Go, when I bid you, order out 
A riotous and ragged rout 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATIO.V. 183 

From dirty lane and alley dark 
From Poplar corner to Hyde Park. 

Come on, brave fellows, qnick surround 'em ; 
With canes and cudgels punch and pound 'em ; 
Brick-bats and broom-sticks, all together, 
Like coblers hammering sides of leather. 

Brave Belcher, Lee, Mendoza, Bourke, 
Let loose your fists in this great work ! 
Here's fine amusement for your paws, 
Without the dread of police laws. 

Let not one Perkinite be found 
Encumbering our British ground ; 
But Keep on pelting, banging, mauling, 
Until old Beelzy's den they 're all in. 

And 1 '11 be there and blow war's trumpet: 
Or with death's kettle-drum will thump it, 
Till all 's " confusion, worse confounded" 
Than erst in Milton's hell abounded. 

Thus, when the Sjiartans were in trouble, 
Tyrteus help'd them through their hobble, 
By singing songs, to raise their courage, 
All piping hot, as pepper-porridge. 



184 TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 

These are the methods of " dead doing/' 
By which to work the wizard's ruin ; 
And when with Satan all such trash is, 
We '11 rise, like Phenix, on its ashes. 

Now, sirs, consent to my petition, 
And send these varlets to perdition ; 
So for your weal and welfare, post hie, 
Will ever pray — 

CHRISTOPHER CAUSTIC. 



ADDITIONAL NOTES, 



No. I. 

Fitted for female education. 

Page 25. We are point blank opposed to allowing females 
any advantages for education, which can possibly induce 
their ladj-^ships to set up for literata. " Knowledge is 
Power,'' and whereas the " seraphic sex" are prone to acquire 
knowledge with more facility, and communicate it with 
more felicity than the rough samples of humanity with whom 
Madam Destiny has had the impudence to connect them by 
ties (pretty easily severed nowadays) we are amazingly appre- 
hensive that ladies will not only monopolize our trade of 
authorship, but usurp our places in Church, Slate and Medi- 
cine. We have often shed cataracts of tears (Delia Crusca) 
over the following lines of Pope, which, though addressed 
to lady Montague, will apply equally well to nine hundred 
and ninetynine other lady luminaries, in whose presence the 
light of Dr Caustic is like the glimmer of & glow worm in 
the glare of sunshine. 

" In beauty or wit 

No mortal as yet 
To question your empire has dared 

But men of discerning 

Have thought that in learning 
To yield to a woman is hard." 

But with leave of the pope, we lords of the lower part of 
creation will not "yield to a woman." We will rather let 



186 -fERRIBLE THACTORAtlON. 

Lord Bacon and the ladies know, by dint of the right of the 
strongest, that knowledge is not power, but that physical 
strength ispoiOer. 

We are excessively provoked with the conductors of the 
North American Review, who in the No. of that work, dated 
October, 1835, p. 430, have reviewed, or rather eulogized 
certain Poems by Mrs Sigourney, and by Miss Gould. And 
what makes such conduct the more preposterous is that those 
ladies rfeserz?e the encomiums of their admiring Reviewers. 
They have, likewise, brought into bold relief a great number 
of lady-authors, such as Miss Burney, Miss Edgworth, Miss 
Baillie, Miss Martineau, Miss Mitford, Mrs Somerville, Mrs 
Hemans, Miss Sedgwick, Miss Leslie, Mrs Child, Mrs 
Hale, &c., whose names and whose merits, correct policy 
Would have consigned to oblivion. Now, be it known, by 
these presents, that the more merit there happens to be 
attached to a lady-author, the more her productions should 
not be taken honorable notice of by a gentleman-critic. 



No. II. 

In foreign source of j'ellow fever. 

Page 54. Some doctors, however, do not coincide ih opinion 
with Dr Caustic on this subject. Dr Miller, in a " Report 
on the vialiffnant disease, which prevailed in Ne^c York, in 
the autumn of 1805," has the folloicing passage : 

" We live in the latitude of pestilence, and our climate 
now perhaps is only beginning to display its tendency to 
produce this terrible scourge. The impurities which time 
and a police, rather moulded in conformity to the usages of 
more northern countries than the exigencies of our own, have 
been long accumulating, are now annually exposed to the 
heats of a burning summer, and send forth exhalations of 
the highest virulence.'* 



tHRRlBLE TRACTORAf ION. 



No. 11 r. 



187 



Page 82, we told your worships, that Perkins was sup- 
ported by Aldini, and promised some additional remarks by 
way of illustrating our assertion. We now intend to prove 
not only that we were correct in our statement, but that light, 
heat or caloric, electricity, Galvanism, Perkinism, animal 
spirits, the social feelings, especially when love is concerned, 
and the stimulus of society, are all intimately connected or 
different modifications of the same matter. 

We will show that light and heat are the same thing in 
essence, by the authority of some of our prime philosophers 
whom it would be heresy to dispute or gainsay. 

" Universal spaco," says Dr Franklin, " so far as we know 
of it, seems filled with a subtil fluid, whose motion, or vibra- 
tion, is called light. 

" This fluid may possibly be the same with that which 
attracted by and entering into other more solid matter, dilates 
the substance, by separating the constituent particles and so 
rendering some solids Jiuid, and maintaining the fluidity of 
others ; of which fluid when our bodies are totally deprived, 
they are said to be frozen ; v/hen they have a proper quantity 
they are in health, and fit to perform all their functions ; it 
is then called natural heat ; when too much, it is called fever ; 
and when forced into the body in too great a quantity from 
without, it gives pain by separating and destroying the flesh, 
and is then called burning ; and the fluid so entering and 
acting is called fire." Transactions of the American Philo- 
sophical Society, vol. iii. p. 5, 6. 

Now we will see what Lavoisier, according to Fourcroy, 
can tell us on this subject. 

" The comparison Which the more modern philosophers, 
and particularly my illustrious friend Monge, have estab- 
lished between caloric and light, so as to consider these two 
eflfects as the product of modifications of the same body, is 



188 TERRIBLE TRACTORATrON. 

entitled to much more attention. It is established on a great 
number of experiments ; it naturally and simply explains 
most of the phenomena ; and it agrees with the sublime 
economy of nature, which multiplies effects much more than 
the bodies which produce them. 

" Fire," he continues, " is disengaged, and shows itself in 
the form of heat^ when it is gently and slowly driven out of 
bodies into the composition of which it entered ; but it shines 
in the form of light when it flies out of compounds, in a 
very compressed state, by a swift motion. 

"According to this ingenious hypothesis, caloric may 
become light, and light on the other hand may become caloric^ 
For this purpose it is only necessary that the first should 
assume more rapidity in its motion, and the second undergo 
a diminution of velocity." Nicholsons^ Fourcroy, vol. i. p. 57. 

Our next step in this our wonderful process is to prove, 
that light, which is the same ns heat, may also be identified 
with electricity. 

Here I shall produce the authority of a writer in the Ency- 
clopaedia Brilannica, who appears to be a very sound philo- 
sopher, tinder the title Electricity, article 83, you will find 
that gunpowder has been fired by the electric blast ; from 
which the writer reasons as follows. 

" As it therefore appears, that the electric fluid, when it 
moves through bodies either with great rapidity or in very 
great quantity will set them on fire, it seems scarce disputable, 
that this fluid is the same with the element of fire. This 
being once admitted, the source from whence the electric 
fluid is derived into the earth and atmosphere must be ex- 
ceedingly evident, being no other than the sun or source of 
light itself." The writer then proceeds to show, that an 
iron wire has been melted by the discharge of a battery of 
electricity, and furnishes proofs which must convince the 
«iost incredulous, of the correctness of his theory. 

Thus far we have proceeded triumphantly in making it 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. ' 189 

abundantly evident that light, heat, and electricity are the 
same in substance ; so that if your worships will permeate 
this subject with due retention and some small share of true 
philosophical perspicacity, you will find that heat and electri- 
city are the dregs or sediment of light, and by digesting Dr 
Black's theory of latent heat, you will find that the matter 
of heat, light, and electricity exists in very vast al)undance 
in all bodies and substances. 

We next will prove that Galvanism is a modification of 
electricity. Here we will advert to the theory of Galvani 
and Aldini, as stated by C. H. Wilkinson, lecturer on Gal- 
vanism in Soho square. Member of the Royal College of Sur- 
geons, &c. &c. This gentleman informs us, that " the animal 
body is a description of Leyden phial, or magic battery, in 
one part of which there is an excess of electricity, and in the 
other a deficiency. The conducting body communicates the 
Jluid of the part where it is abundant to the part where it is 
defective ; and in this passage of the electricity, the muscu- 
lar contractions are obtained in the same way as the dis- 
charges are produced by the Leyden phial or magic batteries. 
As the conducting bodies in electricity are the sole agents in 
the discharge of the Leyden phial, so the same bodies alone 
serve likewise to excite muscular contractions. Wilkinson^s 
Elements of Galvanism., p. 82. 

We next will prove that Perkins's points are the proper 
conductors of animal electricity. From a specification which 
Mr Perkins published in the Repertory of Arts, it would 
seem that zinc is the principal ingredient in the tractors. 

" Zinc," says Fourcroy, '•' is a conductor of electricity like 
all other metals, and nothing particular has hitherto been 
discovered in it with respect to this property; however, the 
powerful manner in which it effects the sensibility of the hu- 
man body in Galvanic experiments seems to give it herein a 
sort of prerogative or pre-eminence over other metallic sub- 
stances. If we place a plate of zinc under the tongue, and 



190 TERRIBLE TRACTQRATION, 

cover the upper surface of this organ with another metal, and 
especially a piece of gold or silver, and then incline the 
extremity of this last, so as to approach it to the plate of 
zinc, at the moment when the two metals come into contact 
with each other, the person who performs the experiments 
feels a very perceptible pricking sensation, heat, irritation, 
and a sort of acerb taste in the tongue, almost always accom- 
panied with a momentous glare, or luminous circle, which 
suddenly appears before his eyes. No metal produces this 
singular effect with such force as zinc is observed to do." 

This animal electricitj'^ is likewise a modification of what 
we call animal spirits, and may be termed the stiviulxis of 
society. That this was well known to the wisest of men, is 
evident from this adage of Solomon : " Iron shaipeneth iron ; 
so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." The 
want of a proper communication among animal Leyden phials 
is the cause of the gloom of the solitaire^ The wish to par- 
take of the benefits of the stimulus of society makes man a 
gregarious animal, and induces the human race to congregate 
in large cities, and to be fond of routs, balls, assemblies, in 
which the aforesaid human electric phi.ils are beaming ani- 
mal electncity in every direction, and thus a flow of animal 
spirits is communicated by a pleasing contagion to all 
present. 

When we see an animal Leyden phial superabounding 
with animal electricity, we say it is a spirited animal. 
When said animal happens to be a hero, a tiger, an irritated 
ram cat, or a black snake intent on his game, visible flashes 
of electricity will blaze from the eyes, and communicate very 
sensible shocks to a spectator. Thus the Gaul, who was 
commanded to cut off the head of Marius, a celebrated 
Roman general, and a personage full of the most positive 
sort of animal electricity, received such a stroke of lightning 
from the battery of that hero's head, and at the same time 
was so thunderstruck with the exclamation of " Tune, homo, 



TERRIBLE TRACTORATION. 191 

audes occidere Caiuvn Mariuvi ?" that the dagger dropped 
bloodless from the hands of the ruthless assassin. Thus 
Alexander, when hampered in the chief city of the Oxydracoe, 
kept his foes at a distance by the fire that flashed from his 
eyes in whole torrents of animal electricity. How often do 
we see a Congressional spouter, or an itinerant field preacher 
electrize a large assembly })y repeated discharges of this 
mysterious fluid. In all cases of fanaticism it is mistaken 
for the fire of devotion, and causes grimaces, contortions, 
convulsions, and other strange symptoms, which, however, 
are easily accounted for by the theory of the " animal Leyden 
pnial." 

But the prettiest experiments ever made with animal 
electricity, I have seen sometimes exhibited by a female 
philosopher to a levee of her admirers. On such occasions, 
the lady's eyes seem to be fountains of animal electricity. 
This electricity, however, is not vitreous and resinous, but 
positive and negative. The former expressed by ag-lance of 
approbation, and the latter by a Jias/i of disdain. The 
different effects which discharges of these diflTerent kinds of 
electricity exhibit in the subjects of experiment may be rated 
among the most wonderful of phenomena. The former 
transports a man, Southey-like, to " the atmosphere of the 
highest of all possible heavens," the latter sinks him " down ! 
down! to the Domdaniel cave at the roots of the ocean." 
But as this is a branch of natural philosophy to which, for 
forty years, past I have not paid the least attention, I shall 
not attempt further to instruct your worships therein, but 
refer you to the experiments so delectably set forth in the 
poems of Little, Johannes Bonefonius, Secundus, and other 
adepts in that curious science. 



AN ODE.* 

Ye sons of Columbia, unite in the cause 
Of liberty, justice, religion, and laws ; 
Should foes then invade us, to battle we Ml bie, 
For the God of our fathers will be our ally ! 

Let Frenchmen advance, 

And all Europe join France, 
Designing our conquest and plunder ; 

United and free 

For ever we '11 be, 
And our cannon shall tell them in thunder, 
That foes to our freedom we '11 ever defy. 
Till the continent sinks, and the ocean is dry ! 

When Britain assail'd us, undaunted we stood, 
Defended the land we had purchased with blood, 



* The above ode was written, set to music, and sung on a 
public occasion in Rutland, Vermont, July, 1798. At that 
time the armament, which afterwards sailed to Egypt, under 
Buonaparte, lay at Toulon : its destination was not known 
in America, but many supposed that it was intended to waft 
the blessings of French liberty to the United States. 
13 



194 AN ODK. 

Our liberty won, and it shall be our boasfy 

If the old world united should menace our coast; — 

Should millions invade, 

In terror array "d, 
Our liberties bid us surrender, 

Our country they 'd find 

With bayonets lined, 
And Washington here to defend her, 
For foes to our freedom we 'II ever defy 
Till the continent sinks, and the ocean is dryf 

Should Buonapart' come with his sans culotte band. 
And a new sort of freedom we do n't understand, 
And make ws an offer to give us as much 
As France has bestow'd on the Swiss and the Dutch, 

His fraud and his force 

W^ill be futile of caurse ; 
We wish for no F*'enchijied freedom: 

If folks beyond sea 

Are to bid us be free, 
We '11 send for them when we shall need 'em. 
But sans rulotte Frenchmen we 'II ever defy, 
Till the continent sinks, and the ocean is dry ! 

We 're anxious that Peace may continue her reign. 
We cherish the virtues which sport in her train ; 
Our hearts ever melt, when the fatherless sigh, 
And we shiver at Horror's funereal cry ; 



AN ODE. 195 

But still, though we prize 
That child of the skies, 
We '11 never like slaves be accosted. 
In a war of defence 
Our means are immense, , 

And we '11 fight till our all is exhausted : 
For foes to our freedom we '11 ever defy, 
Till the continent sinks, and the ocean is dry ! 

The EAGLE of FREEDOM with rapturc behold ! 
Overshadow our land with his plumage of gold! 
The flood-gates of glory are open on high, 
And Warren and Mercer descend from the sky ! 

They come from above 

With a message of love, 
To bid us be firm and decided ; 

« At liberty's call, 

Unite one and all, 
For you conquer, unless you 're divided. 
Unite, and the foes to your freedom defy, 
Till the continent sinks, and the ocean is dry !" 

« Americans, seek no occasion for war ; 
The rude deeds of rapine still ever abhor ; 
But if in defence of your rights you should arm, 
Let toils ne'er discourage, nor dangers alarm. 

For foes to your peace 

Will ever increase, 



196 AHf ODE.. 

If freedom and fame you should barter^ 
Let those rights be yours, 
While nature endures, 
For Omnipotence gave you the charter!"* 
Then foes to our freedom we ^1 ever defy, 
Till the continent sinks, and. the ocean is dry t 



THE MORNING. 

IJehold, my fair, the ruddy morii 

Anticipate the day ■ 
What beauteous lints the sky adorn, 

And gild the azure way ! 

The sombre mtsts, which gloomy night 

Had gather'd in the vale, 
Are borne aloft, and wing their flight 

Before the rising gale. 

Now changed to clouds of varied huCj 

In airy maze they dance ; 
Now sweep athwart the welkin blue, 

And gem the gay expanse. 

The plumy tenant of the grove 
Is perch'd on yonder spray, 

And serenades his little love 
With sweetest roundelay. 



198 THE MORNINGr 

To taste the phjasures of the mom 

Is bliss without alloy, 
Though fashion's drowsy votVies scorn; 

To quaff the cup of joy. 

But rise, my lovely charmer, rise 

To greet the early ray,^ 
And let my Teraminta's eye* 

Add lustre to the day. 



AN ODE.* 

Almighty Power! — The One Supreme 
Our souls inspire^ attune our lays 

With hearts as solemn as our theme^ 
To sing hosaunas to thy praise ! 

Then, while we swell the sacred song^ 
And bid the pealing anthem rise 

May seraphim the strain prolong, 
And hymns of glory fill the skies. 

Thy word omnific form'd this earth, 
Ere time began revolving years -^ 

Thy fiat gave to Nature birth, 

And tuned to harmony the spheres. 



* This ode Was written to the music of an an'tiieni, preVi^ 
ously composed for other words, by Ohver Holden, Esq. 
Charlestown, Mass., a gentleman eminent for his musical 
talents, and sung during divine service, at the anniversary of 
Vermont General Election. 



^00 AN ODE, 

When stern oppression's iron handy 
Our pious fathers forced to roam, 

And o'er the wild wave seek the land 

Where freedom rears her hallow'd dome — - 

When tempests howl'd, and o'er the main^ 
Pale horror rear'd his haggard form ; 

Thou didst the fragile bark sustain 
To stem the firry of the storm ! 

Thou badest the wilderness disclose 
The varied sweets of vernal bloom — 

The desert blossom'd like the rose, 
And breath'^d Arabiti's rich perfume! 

Look down from heaven's empyreal heighty^ 
And gild with smiles this happy day ; 

Send us some chosen Son of Light 
Our feet to guide in wisdom's way. 

The sons of faction strike with awe, 

And hush the din of party rage, 
That Liberty, secured by Law, 

May realize a golden age. 

On those thy choicest blessings shower 
To whom the cares of State are given ; 

May Justice wield the sword of power. 

Till Earth 's the miniature or Heaven ! 



ON THE DEATH OF WASHINGTON. 

Why moves to mournful measures slow 
Yon sable retinue of wo, 

With tearful eye and visage pale? 
And why this universal gloom ? 
Sure Nature trembles o^er her tomb, 

And bids her wilder'd children wail ! 

l)o plagues infest, do wars alarm, 
Has God in wrath made bare his arm. 

To hurl his bolts of vengeance round ? 
Have towns been sack'd by hostile ire. 
Have cities sunk in floods of fire, 

While earthquakes shook the shudderingground 

Ah ! no, thy sons, Columbia, mourn 
A hero past that fatal " bourn 

From whence no traveller returns ;" 
Before him none more good, more great, 
E'er felt the unerring shafts of fate. 

Though glory's lamp illume their urns. 



202 ON THE DEA.TH OF WASHINGTON. 

Behold yoo pallid war-worn chief, 
A marble rrjonurnent of grief, 

Who once our troops to victory led ; — 
The burst of sorrow now control. 
But now the tears of anguish roll, 

A tribute to the immortal dead! 

Fain would the muse those virtues scan. 
Which dignified the godlike man, 

And launch in seas without a shore ; 
But sure his name alone conveys 
More than a thousand hymns of praise, 

The matchless Washington 's no more ! 



DIRECTIONS FOR DOING POETRY.* 

tN THE SIMPLB STYLE OF SOUTHEY, WORDSWORTH, AND 
OTHER MODERN METRE MONGERS. 

Supposing you would sing 

About love iii the Spring, 

Something like this will be just the thing* 

Tell the reader to behold 
The gay 

Tints of the cloUd-dappled morn I 
Then streak the azure with gems set in gold^ 

And bring into view 

Some Tyrian hue, 

Mix'd with indigo blue. 
Then the meads must be spangled^ 
And glittering grove 

With OCEANS of dew ! 

Whew a 

* There is an inflated species of simplicity, consisting of* 
exaggerations of thought expressed by colloquial barbarisms, 
mixed with occasional pomposity of diction, which it is the 
object of the above to ridicule. The measure is after the 
model of " Thalaba ;" but rhyme is added, as Butler says^ 
merely by way of rvdder to the verses. 



204 DIRECTIONS FOR DOING POETRY. 

But now you must mind 
That rhymes you must find 
For Hues left behind, 

You therefore must rove^ 
Say 

On any day 

About the fag end of May, 

And bid lilacs adorn 

Your beautiful morn; 

And the thickets must be tangled 

For the sake of your spangled. 

Now having found 

Yourself on firm ground, 

You may roam along the edges 

Of hawthorn hedges ; 

Then bid beds of roses 

And pretty pink posies 

Ravish our eyes and captivate our noses ! ! 

Interweave, if you will, 

The hyacinth and daffodil, 

With now and then a big weed 
Of purslain and of pig weed, 

And add fragrant crops 

Of potato tops. 
And scatter, here and thereabout, 



DIRECTIONS FOR DOING POETRY. 205 

As many hops 
As you may please to care about ; 
And, between whiles, 

Say 
That Nature smiles, 
In her new holiday 

Dress ; — 
Nevertheless, 
These beauties so rare 
Can never compare 
With the dear little dove 
With whom you 're in love. 

Next glance a quick eye 

To the flame cinctur'd, multihu'd arch in the 

sky; — 
In our vernacular idiom call'd a rainbow, 
Which perhaps the uupoetic reader would fain 
know. 
Then positively declare^ 
That AnTianda the fair, 
Who really beats the Dutch, 
Exceeds as much 
All such 
As does a fine lilac silk gown 
The dirtiest grogram in town. 
Then bid your muse higher fly, 



206 DIRECTIONS FOR DOING POETRY. 

And say your queen of lasses 
Each country wench surpasses, 
Yea, far more excels 
Your Moggies and Nells, 
Than doth the noontide blaze the scintillating 
fire fly. 



HORACE SURPASSED. 

How funny 't is, when pretty lads and lasses 

Meet altogether, just to have a caper, 

And the black fiddler plays you such a tune as 

Sets you a frisking. 

High bucks and ladies, standing in a row all. 
Make finer show than troops of continentals. 
Balance and foot it, rigadoon and chasse. 

Brimful of rapture. 

Thus poets tell us how one Mister Orpheus 
Led a rude forest to a contra-dance, and 
Play'd the brisk tune of Yankee Doodle on a 

New Holland fiddle. 

Spruce our gallants are, essenced with pomatum, 
Heads powder'd white as Killington-Peak snow- 
storm ;* 
Ladies, how brilliant, fascinating creatures. 

All silk and muslin ! 

* Kilington Peak. The summit of the Green Mountains, 
in Vermont, is so called. 



208 HORACl SURPASSED. 

But now behold a sad reverse of fortune, 
Life's brightest scenes are checker'd with dis- 
aster, 
Clumsy Charles Clumpfoot treads on Tabby's 
gown, and 

Tears all the tail off! 

Stop, stop the fiddler, all away this racket — 
Hartshorn and water ! See the ladies fainting, 
Paler than primrose, fluttering about like 

Pigeons affrighted ! 

Not such the turmoil, when the sturdy farmer 
Sees turbid whirlwinds beat his oats and rye 

down, 
And the rude hail-stones, big as pistol-bullets, 

Dash in his windows ! 

Willy Wagnimble dancing with Flirtilla, 
Almost as light as air-balloon inflated, 
Rigadoons round her, 'till the lady's heart is 

Forced to surrender. 

Benny Bamboozle cuts the drollest capers. 
Just like a camel, or a hippopot'mus. 
Jolly Jack Jumble makes as big a rout as 

Forty Dutch horses ! 



HORACE SURPASSED. 209 



See Angelina lead the mazy dance down. 
Never did fairy trip it so fantastic ; 
How my heart flutters, while my tongue pronounces 

Sweet little seraph I 

Such are the joys, that flow from contra-dancing, 
Pure as the primal happiness of Eden, 
Love, mirth, and music, kindle in accordance 

Kaptures extatic. 



14 



SONG.* 

When cannons roar, when bullets fly, 
And shouts and groans affright the sky, 
Amid the battle's dire alarms, 
I '11 think, my Mary, on thy charms ; 

The crimson field 

Fresh proof shall yield 
Of thy fond soldier's love ; 

And thy dear form 

In battle's storm 
His guardian angel prove. 

Should dangers thicken all around, 
And dying warriors strew the ground, 
In varied shapes, though death appear, 
Thy fancied form my soul shall cheer ; 

The crimson field 

Fresh proof shall yield 

* Written for the occasion, and sung in New York, July 
the fourth, 1805. 



SONG. 2U 



Of thy fond soldier's love ; 

And thy dear form 

In battle's storm 
His guardian angel prove. 

And when loud cannons cease to roar, 
And when the din of battle's o'er, 
When safe return'd from war's alarms, 
O then I '11 feast on Mary's charms ! 

In ecstacy 

I '11 fly to thee 
My ardent passion prove, 

Left glory's field. 

My life I '11 yield 
To all the joys of love. 



TABITHA TOWZEU. 

Miss Tabitha Towzer is fair, 

No guinea-pig ever was neater, 
Like a hakmatak slender and spare. 

And sweet as a musk-squash, or sweeter* 

Miss Tabitha Towzer is sleek, 

When dress'd in her pretty new tucker, 

Like an otter that paddles the creek, 
In quest of a mud-pout, or sucker.* 

Her forehead is smooch as a tray. 

Ah I smoother than that, on my soul, 

And turn'd, as a body may say, 
Like a delicate neat wooden-bowl. 

To what shall I liken her hair, 
As straight as a carpenter's line, 

* Mud-pout and sucker are two kinds of fishes of little 
value, common enough in muddy streams. The otter pur- 
sues these with peculiar avidity. 



tj^eitha towzer. 213 

For similes sure must be rare, 

When we speak of a nympli so divine. 

Not the head of Nazarite seer, 

That never was shaven or shorn. 
Nought equals the locks of my dear 

But the silk of an ear of green corn* 

My dear has a beautiful nose, 

With a sled-runner crook in the middle^ 
Which one would be led to suppose 

Was meant for the head of a fiddle* 

Miss Tabby has two pretty eyes, 

Glass buttons shone never so bright, 

Their love-lighted lustre outvies 

The lightning-bug's twinkle by night. 

And oft with a magical glance, 

She makes in my bosom a pother, 

When leering politely askance, 

She shuts one, and winks with the other. 

The lips of my charmer are sweet, 
As a hogshead of maple molasses, 

And the ruby red tint of her cheek, 
The gill of a salmon surpasses. 



214 TABITHA TOWZEK, 

No teeth like her's ever were seen, 

Nor ever described in a novel, 
Of a beautiful kind of pea-green, 

And shaped like a wooden-shod-shoveL 

Her fine little ears, you would judge, 
Were wings of a bat in perfection ; 

A dollar I never should grudge 

To put them in Peale's grand collection. 

Description must fail in her chin. 
At least till our language is richer, 

Much fairer than ladle of tin, 

Or beautiful brown earthen pitcher. 

So pretty a neck, I '11 be bound. 

Never join'd head and body together. 

Like nice crook'd neck'd squash on the ground, 
Long whiten'd by winter-like weather. 

Should I set forth the rest of her charms, 
I might by some phrase that 's improper, 

Give modesty's bosom alarms, 

Which I would n't do for a copper. 

Should I mention her gait or her air. 
You might think I intended to banter J 



TABITHA TOWZER. 215 

She moves with more grace, you would swear, 
Than a founder'd horse forced to a canter. 

She sang with a beautiful voice, 

Which ravish'd you out of your senses ; 

A pig will make just such a noise 

When liis hind-leg stuck fast in the fence is» 



THE SPLENDORS OF THE SETTING SUN. 

Sol, slowly sinking down the steep of heaven, 
With softened splendor greets the musing eye, 

Resigns his throne to "sober suited even," 
But decorates while he deserts the sky. 

His noonday beams, insufferably bright, 
Are now succeeded by a milder blaze, 

And every slanting filament of light 

Heaven's kind and cheering effluence conveys. 

Now let me wend my solitary way 

Where groves and lawns present alternate 
charms; — 
Gaze on the glories of the waning day. 

Till night shall fold me in her dusky arms. 

Mark how the clouds now glow like molten gold,, 
Now gleam like snow-banks, heap'd on banks 
of snow ; 



THE SETTIWG SUN. 217 

Now dash'd with azure, softer hues unfold, 
Now shift and kindle to a furnace-glow ! 

Compared with these, what is the pride of art! 

Your petty palaces and pigmy spires — 
The paltry pageants of the noisy mart. 

And all the city-connoisseur admires ! 

Should the whole race of man unite as one 
To celebrate some glorious festal day. 

The simple splendor of the setting sun 

Would far surpass their most superb display. 



THE SLEEP OF THE SLUGCARD, 

LIST to an indolent lump of live lumber, 
Whom slothfulness binds with invisible bands^ 

A Httle more sleep, and a little more slumber, 
A little more folding together the hands. 

"I've a villainous cold — ^and my head, how it 
aches ! 
The north wind is blowing, and stings like a 
hornet, 
And as to this rising as soon as day breaks, 

'T is a vile vulgar habii, and gentlemen scorn it* 

" I 'm none of those wretches, who labor for bread 
Through foul or fair weather, whatever may hap, 

1 mean to enjoy both my table and bed, 

So let me turn over and take t'other nap. 

** 1 've money enough, and can live at my ease^ 
I cannot be caught in necessity's trap^ 



THE SLEEP OF THE SLtJGGARD. 219 

Will sleep every day till the next, if I please, 
And so will indulge in another good nap." 

His heavy hydropical carcase he turns, 

And sinks in uneasy intemperate rest, 
Till dim in his bosom the lamp of life burns, 
While snorting with nightmare and plethora prest* 

What horrible visions his bed hover o'er, 

The phantoms of spleen, the blue devils dire, 

Like Gorgous and Hydras of fabulous lore, 
Or red dragons belching whole rivers of fire. 

Now clings to the side of a prominent steep, 
O'er a rough, roaring cataract hangs by a hair, 

Now suddenly sinks in a bottomless deep. 

And starts, half awake with a shriek of despair ! 

Thus rolls like a porpoise o'er billows of down, 
Grows big as a mammoth, and fat as a seal, 

Lives a plague to his friends, or a charge to the town, 
And dies to make worms a most plentiful meal. 

Ye sons of Columbia, shun the syren of sloth 
For if you submit to her leaden control. 

You will find, when too late, like a venomous moth, 
She consumes a man's substance and poisons 
his souL 



220 THE SLEEP OF THE SLUGGARD. 

If the wizard of indolence takes you in hand, 
Quick break from his grasp, or you're quickly 
undone, 

Your limbs will be lithe as a wickapy wand,* 
And your sinews be soften'd like wax in the sun. 

* Wickapy is the popular name for a shrub, which is re- 
markably flexible. 



"A SOFT ANSWER TURNETH AWAY 
WRATH." 

A GENTLE answer will assiiage 
The ruthless vehemence of ire, 

But petulance opposed to rage 
Is adding fuel to the fire. 

He who is cautious, calm and cool, 
When made the subject of attack, 

May smile defiance on the fool, 

Whose anger puts him on the rack. 

If injury you must repel, 

Hard words are not of any use, 

The greatest energy as well 

Is shown without, as with abuse. 

If one should offer you offence. 

By being angry with the elf, 
Instead of gaining recompense 

You are but punishing yourself. 



222 GENTLENESS. 

But gentle answers will assuage 
The headlong vehemence of ire, 

While petulance opposed to rage, 
Adds tenfold fuel to the fire. 



"HAVING FOOD AND RAIMENT, LET US 
THEREWITH BE CONTENT." 

Art thou blest with food and raiment, 
Give God thanks for favors given ; 

Gratitude is all the payment 

Thou can'st make indulgent Heaven. 

Clothing coarse, and scant subsistence, 
Recompense which labor brings, 

With contentment make existence 
Happier than the life of kings. 

Why in heaping useless treasure. 
Shorten life, and health destroy ? 

Where 's the profit or the pleasure. 
Hoarding what you ne'er enjoy ? 

Why, for Mammon's paltry proffers, 

Sell thyself to sin a slave, 
Can the wealth which swells thy coffers, 

Buy exemption from the grave ? 



224 CONTENTMENT. 

Since the thread of life is brittle 
Heed the poet's moral song, 

« Man in this world needs but little, 
And that little needs not long." 

Wants by luxury created — 

All of artificial kind, 
By indulgence never sated. 

Weaken and debase the mind. 

To the hardy child of nature. 
Decent clothes and frugal fare, 

Furnish pure enjoyments greater 

Than the pamper'd monarch's share. 

Gold by avarice that 's hoarded, 
Might as well be in the mine, 

Wealth that's generously aflforded, 
Can alone be counted thine. 

Then, if blest with food and raiment, 
Let thy gratitude be shown. 

No man's merits, as a claimant. 
Give a right to these alone. 



HARVEST — INTEMPERANCE. 

The arable fields and gay meadows behold, 
And laughing luxuriant landscape accord, 

In tributes of verdure, enamell'd with gold, 
The hard-handed husbandman's promised re- 
ward. 

But pause ere you gather the bountiful crop. 
And listen to well meant advice of a friend, 

The evils which flow from intemperance stop. 
So far as your own good example may tend. 

Avoid the inveterate habit of some, 

(Excessively foolish, atrociously sinful,) 

Now bloated with brandy, now reeling with rum. 
Now stuffing with whiskey a Spanish brown 
skin-full. 

With the fire of the elements raging without, 
If the fire of the still is consuming within, 

A body of adamant soon must give out. 

And the steel-sinew'd laborer soon must give in. 
15 



iJ26 HARVEST — INTEMPERANCE. 

A man had much better be burnt at the stake, 
For thus he will finish his troubles much quicker, 

Than his own carcase take a blue blaze to make, 
And be burning for years with the fire of strong 
liquor. 



LINES WRITTEN IN A YOUNG LADY'S 
ALBUM. 

Miss Ann, you are, it seems to me, 

An essence all ethereal ; 
The brightest being that can be, 

Entirely immaterial. 

A pencil tipp'd with solar rays 

Your charms could scarcely blazon ; 

Contrasted with your beauty's blaze 
Bright Sol 's a pewter basin. 

Transcendent little sprig of light, 

If rhymes are always true, 
An angel is an ugly sprite. 

Compared to Sylph like you. 

You frowning tell me, « This indeed 

Is flattery past all bearing, 
I ne'er before did hear nor read 

Of any quite so glaring." 



228 LINES IN A YOUNG LADT'S ALBUM, 

Yes, this is flattery, sure enough, 

And its exaggeration 
May teach you how to hold such stuff 

In utter detestation. 

Should beaux your ladyship accost 
With something like this flummery, 

Tell them their labor will be lost, 
For this transcends their mummery. 

The man whose favor 's worth a thought, 

To flattery can't descend ; 
The servile sycophant is not 

Your lover nor your friend. 



THE INDEPENDENT FARMER. 

It may very truly be said 

That his is a noble vocation, 
Whose industry leads him to spread 

About him a little Creation. 

He lives independent of all 

Except th' Omnipotent Donor : 
Has always enough at his call — 

And more is a plague to its owner. * 

He works with his hands, it is true. 

But happiness dwells with employment, 

And he who has nothing to do 

Has nothing by way of enjoyment. 

His labors are mere exercise, 

Which saves him from pains and physicians ; 
Then, Farmers, you truly may prize 

Your own as the best of conditions. 



230 THE INDEPENDENT FARMER. 

From competence, shared with content^ 
Since all true felicity springs, 

The life of a farmer is blent 

With more real bliss than a king's. 



THE CULTIVATOR'S ART. 

We 're highly gratified to find, 
The public more and more inclined 
The Cultivator's art to practise, 
And patronize, because the fact is 
That righteousness and cultivation 
Go hand in hand t' exalt a nation : 
And Husbandry 's a hobby which 
A world may ride with spur and switch, 
If all mankind at once bestrode him 
They could not tire nor overload him. 
Not only men, who sit astride, 
But ladies also on a side- 
Saddle so neat, or on a pillion. 
That's big enough to hold a million, 
May ride our hobby with a cheer-up. 
And he '11 not kick, bite, plunge, nor rear up. 
But vires in eundo crescit,* 
As cousin Virgil somewhere has it 

* Virgil says " acqulrit,''^ which not rhyming we use a sub- 
stitute ; 

" For rhyme the rudder is of verses." 



23^ THE cultivator's art* 

So fire, which has obtain'd ascendence, 
When setting up for independence, 
Prepares by heat of radiation 
Combustibles for conflagration ; — 
By burning fast, the mighty master 
Acquires fresh means of burning faster,. 
Till blazing pyramids arise, 
Which threaten to consume the skies^ 

With ken prophetic, we behold 
A brighter age than that of goldy 
Which, with accelerating pace, 
Is hurrying on to bless our race J 
And hail its grand approximation, 
Mark'd by superior cultivation, 
When wise men's heads, and good men'^s heartSj, 
Devoted to the art of arts, 
And industry's untiring hand, 
Shall make a garden of our land — 
Yea, make New England, all exceeding, 
A new edition of old Eden, 
if not quite equal, yet before ft, 
In many a root, and fruit, and floret, 
Indebted for its propagation 
To modern arts of cultivation. \ 

We 're tranced with rapture, when we find 
The fairer moiety of mankind, 



Tflii CtJLTlVAfOR^S ART. 233 

Whose smile makes mortal man's condition 

But little short of sheer fruition, 

By whose society is given 

Earth's purest prototype of Heaven, 

Th' angelic part of human nature 

Inspire and aid the cultivator. 

A plant that 's sunn'd by ladies' eyes 

Will like an exhalation rlse^ 

We hope that horticulture may 

Be therefore blest with beauty's ray^ 

Till Flora's germs gem every waste, 

And every grove 's a " Bower of Taste.'^ 

Adam, in Eden, we believe, 
Had been a brute without his Eve ; 
An arid heath, a blasted common, 
Blest with the smiles of lovely woman, 
We should prefer to all that 's rare 
In paradise, without the fair. 
We therefore pray that friendship's band 
From every lady in the land. 
May be to us henceforth extended, 
From this time till our time is ended 5 
And would solicit every charmer 
To please to patronize the Farmer, 
And make those gentlemen, who claim 
Her approbation, do the same ; 



234 THE cultivator's art. 

And common justice must require her 
To grant this boon to an admirer 
Like us, so prone to chant her praises, 
In verse which absolutely blazes. 

His head is very like a stump 
Whate'er its craniologic bump, 
Who does not see that we the tillers 
Of earth compose the nation's pillars. 
And may be styled, with strict propriety, 
The props of civilized society. 
What would have been poor mortals' lot — 
Yea, what were man, if we were not ? 
Nature's poor, simple, houseless child. 
The weakest wild boast of the wild. 
Must live on browse, his home must be 
A cavern or a hollow tree ; 
Sometimes, in spite of fears and cares, 
Be served up ravv to wolves and bears. 
Or maugre tooth, nail, fist, and truncheon, 
Make hungry catamounts a luncheon. 

Our art, moreover, claims ascendence 
As german to our independence ; 
Both, commonly, are coexistent, 
And each the other's best assistant. 



THE cultivator's ART. 235 

We farmers are a sort of stuff, 

Tyrants will always find too tough 

For them to work up into slaves, 

The servile tools of lordly knaves. 

Those men v/ho till the stubborn soil, 

Enlighten'd, and inured to toil. 

Cannot be made to quail or cower 

By traitor's art or tyrant's power, 

They might as well attempt to chain 

The west wind in a hurricane; — 

Make rivers run up hill by frightening. 

Or steal a march on kindled lightning — 

The great sea-serpent, which we 've read of, 

Take by the tail and snap his head off — 

The firmament on cloudy nights, 

Illume with artificial lights, 

By such an apparatus as 

Is used for lighting streets with gas — 

Or, having split the north pole till it's 

Divided into baker's billets, 

Make such a blaze as never shone, 

And torrefy the frozen zone — 

With clubs assail the polar bear, 

And drive the monster from his lair— • 

Attack the comets as they run 

With loads of fuel for the sun, 



236 THE cultivator's art. 

And overset by oppugnation 

Those shining colliers of creation — 

The Milky Way McAdamize, 

A railway raise to span the skies, 

Then make, to save Apollo's team, 

The Solar Chariot go by steam. 

These things shall tyrants do, and more 

Than we have specified, before 

Our cultivators they subdue, 

While grass is green, or sky ia blue. 



AN ODE. 

O'er the wild Atlantic wave, 

Lo the fiends of discord rave ; 

Battle's bray is heard from far, 
Battle's bray is heard from far, 

To Bellona's blood-stain'd car, 

Yoked the madding steeds of war : — 
But no fiend of battle roars 
Round Columbia's happy shores ; 
Peace and plenty, hand in hand, 
Join to bless her happy land. 

CHORUS. 

Laud we then the God of Heaven, 
At whose behest fair peace is giv'n. 
The God, who led our fathers o'er 
To Columbia's happy shore. 

Where th' embattled host of France, 
To the kindling war advar .-, 



238 ' AN ODE. 

There shall heroes bite the dust, 
There shall heroes l)ite the dust, 

Blood shall tinge the rubrick waves 

Where the fiend of battle raves. 

Sons of honor, " Sons of soul," 
Whom no tyrants can control, 
Patriotic myriads join, 
Round fair freedom's sacred shrine. 

Ever laud the God of Heaven, 
At whose behest fair peace is giv'n, 
The God, who led our fathers o'er. 
To Columbia's happy shore. 

Where Britannia's sons unite 

To provoke the distant fight. 

There shall countless heroes fall. 
There shall countless heroes fall. 

When the din of battle join'd. 

Hurtles in the hollow wind. 

Fiends of horror flit around, 
Dying heroes strow the ground, 
Countless ghosts shall wailing go 
To the sullen shades below. 

Laud we then the God of Heav^Uy 
At whose behest fair peace is giv'n. 
The God who led our fathers o'er, 
To Columbia's happy shore. 



AN ODE. 239 

May not anarch's hydra form, 

Thunder his voice, his breath the storm, 
Desolate our happy land. 
Desolate our happy land — 

Mid fell discord's wild uproar. 

May no fiend of anarch roar, 

Call the rugged, meddling throng 
Of every clime, of every tongue, 
To light fair freedom's funeral pyre. 
And bid her mid the blaze expire. 

May the gracious God of Heav'n, 
At whose behest fair peace is giv'n, 
The God who led our fathers o'er. 
Still protect Columbia's shore. 



THE COURSE OF CULTURE.* 

Survey the world, through every zone, 

From Lima to Japan, 
In lineaments of light 't is shown 

That CULTURE makes the man. 
By manual culture one attains 

What industry may claim, 
Another's mental toil and pains 

Attenuate his frame. 

Some plough and plant the teeming soil 

Some cultivate the arts ; 
And some devote a life of toil 

To tilling heads and hearts. 
Some train the adolescent mind. 

While buds of promise blow, 
And see each nascent twig inclined 

The way the tree should grow. 

The first man, and the first of men, 
Were tillers of the soil ; 

* Sung at the Anniversary of the Mass. Hort. Society, 
Sept. 10, 1830. 



THE COURSE OF CULTURE. 241 

And that was mercy's mandate then, 

Which destined man to moil. 
Indulgence preludes fell attacks 

Of merciless disease, 
And sloth extends on fiery racks 

Her listless devotees. 

Hail, Horticulture ! Heaven-ordained, 

Of every art the source, 
Which man has polished, life sustained, 

Since time commenced his course. 
Where waves thy wonder-working wand 

What splendid scenes disclose ! 
The blasted heath, the arid strand, 

Out-bloom the gorgeous rose ! 

Even in the seraph-sex is thy 

Munificence described ; 
And Milton says in lady's eye 

Is Heaven identified. 
A seedling, sprung from Adam's side, 

A most celestial shoot I 
Became of Paradise the pride, 

And bore a world of fruit. 

The lily, I'ose, carnation, blent 
By Flora's magic power, 
16 



242 THE COURSE OF CULTURE. 

And tulip, feebly represent 

So elegant a flower : 
Then surely, bachelors, ye ought 

In season to transfer 
Some sprig of this sweet " touch-me-kot," 

To grace your own parterre ; 

And every gardener should be proud, 

With tenderness and skill, 
If haply he may be allowed 

This precious plant to till. 
All that man has, had, hopes, can have, 

Past, promised, or possessed, 
Are fruits which culture gives or gave 

At industry's behest. 



A SONG. 

SUNG AT AN AGRICULTURAL DINNER, AT CONCORD, MASS. 

Since time in the primer first sharpen'd his scythe. 
And the sands in his glass were beginning to flow, 
There never was spectacle bonny and bhthe, 
Which came fairly up to our Grand Cattle 
Show. 

Derry down, down, down, derry down. 

Here 's bulls, hogs, and horses, and sheep not a few, 
Respectable animals, worthy a prize. 

Like good go-to-meeting folks, each in his pew, 
All sober as deacons — if not quite so wise. 

Master Pig is the Chorister, just twist his tail, 
And he '11 give you altissimo trills in high style, 

The fine diatonics which run through the scale 
Of his exquisite gamut will ring for a mile. 

Our roots have run down to gravity's centre. 
Some went on to China, and thieves pulled 
them through — 



244 A SONG. 

But that's a tough story, and I shouldn't venture, 
In a high court of Justice to swear it is true. 

And here we have oxen, stout animals, which 
Might well go to Congress, representing their 
race, 
Round gravity's centre just give them a hitch, 
And I guess they would twitch the great globe 
out of place. 

The match of our Ploughmen was ne'er matched 
before. 
Save when a lorn lover is matched to his fair; 
They turned the eartli over as flat as this floor, 
Such chaps the great globe, like an apple can 
pare. 

In troth, all the world 's nothing more than a show 
Of animals, shut up, or running at large, 

You meet with queer creatures wherever you go, 
And pity their keepers, who have them in charge. 

A calf sent to college comes out a great bore, 
An odd metamorphosis that, it is true, 

But one which has taken place over and o'er ; — 
Now I do not mean you, sir, nor you, sir, nor you. 



A SONG. 245 

I hate personalities, therefore won't say, 

How a jackass conducts when made just ass of 
Peace, 

Such animals now and then come in my way, 
But I never shear hogs for the sake of their fleece. 

A vile pettifogger, all quibble and jaw. 

Is ninetynine thousand times worse than a brute, 

In a sunbeam he '11 pick an indictable flaw, 

And against his own shadow show cause for a 
suit. 

Here 's health to our orator,* one who can boast 
That he practises well what he preaches about; 

But gentlemen please not to huiter my toast, 

For we like him so well we can take him without. 

Here's "Middlesex Husbandmen," doing more 
good 
Than all the political clubs ever known, 
Unless a man's head is the essence of wood. 
He ranks them above any king on his throne. 
Derry dowrij doivrij down, derry down, 

*Hoii. Elias Phinney. 



THE EVILS OF A MISCHIEVOUS TONGUE. 

Many have fallen by the edge of the sword, but not so 
many as have fallen by the tongue. — Eccl. Apoc. xxviii. 8. 

Tho' millions, the sword of the warrior has 
slaughter'd, 

While fame has the homicide's eulogy rung : 
Yet many more millions on millions are martyr'd ; 

Cut off by that cowardly weapon, the tongue. 

One sword may be match'd by another as keen, 
In battle the bold man a bolder may meet, 

-But the shaft of the slanderer, flying unseen 
From the quiver of malice, brings ruin complete. 

An insolent tongue, by a taunt or a gibe. 

Enkindles heart-burnings and bloody affrays ; 

A treacherous tongue, when impell'd by a bribe, 
The guiltless condemns, or a nation betrays, 

A smooth subtle tongue vile seducers employ 
The fair sex to lure to libidinous thrall } 



SLANDER. 247 

A slip of the tongue may its owner destroy, 

And the tongue of the serpent occasion'd the fall. 

Then be it impress'd on Columbian youth, 

That the tongue is an engine of terrible force ; 

Not govern'd by reason, not guided by truth, 
A plague, which may desolate worlds in its 
course. 



CHEERFULNESS. 

" A merry heart doeth good like a medicine." 

With mirth let us cherish our hearts, 
'T is a precept by Solomon given, 

And cheerfulness surely imparts 
The temper best fitted for heaven. 

Among all the numberless ways 

By which folly contrives to be wrong, 

There is none which more weakness displays 
Than wearing a visage too long. 

Th' Omnipotent Donor designs 

That the gifts of His grace be enjoy'd ; 

Hence, he that forever repines, 
Had better be better employ'd. 

When first was created our race, 

This earth for man's mansion was given. 

And shall he find fault with the place 
To which he 's allotted by heav'n ? 



CHEERFULNESS. 249 

'T is a thing, I believe, understood, 

In which every sect is agreed, 
This earth w^as declared to be good, 

And so in the Bible we read. 

Under Providence, tenants at will, 

A fine habitation we hold ; 
For us to be murmuring still 

Is wicked, ungrateful and bold. 

Yet well-meaning people I 've seen. 
Who think true religion is shown 

By a sort of a wo-begone mein, 
And a whining, conventicle tone. 

'T is true, there 's a season to mourn. 

As Solomon says — ne'ertheless 
Our grief should be manfully borne, 

And 'tis folly to cherish distress. 

A train of diseases await 

On a heart that forever is sad, ' 
And some, from a sorrowing state. 

Become irretrievably mad. 

That religion can never he true 
Which bows its disciples to earth, 

For he that has heav'n in view. 
Has the best of all titles to mirth. 



250 CHEERFULNESS. 

With mirth then we '11 cherish our hearts, 
'T is a mandate by Solomon given, 

For cheerfulness surely imparts 
The temper best fitted for heaven. 



EULOGY ON THE TIMES, 

Let poets scrawl satiric rhymes, 
And sketch the follies of the times, 

With much caricaturing ; 
But I, a bon-ton-bard, declare 
A set of slanderers they are, 

E'en past a Job's enduring. 

Let crabbed cynics snarl away, 
And pious parsons preach and pray 

Against the vices reigning ; 
That mankind are so wicked grown. 
Morality is scarcely known, 

And true religion waning* 

Societies, who vice suppress, 
May make a rumpus ,• ne'ertheless, 

Our^s is the best of ages ; 
Such hum-drum folks our fathers were. 
They could no more with us compare, 

Than Hottentots with sages. 



252 THE TIMES. 

It puts the poet in a pet 

To think of them, a vulgar set ; 

But WE, thank G — d, are quality ! 
For we have found this eighteenth century 
What ne'er was known before, I '11 venture ye, 

Religion's no reality ! 

Tom Paine, and Godwin, both can tell 
That there is no such thing as hell ! 

A doctrine mighty pleasant ; 
Your old-wives tales of a hereafter 
Are things for ridicule and laughter. 

While we enjoy the present. 

We 've nought to do, but frisk about, 
At midnight ball, and Sunday rout, 

And Bacchanalian revel ; 
To gamble, drink, and live at ease, 
Our great and noble selves to please, 

Nor care for man, nor devil. 

In these good times, with little pains, 
And scarce a penny-worth of brains, - 

A man with great propriety. 
With some small risk of being hung, 
May cut a pretty dash among 

The foremost in society. 



THE TIMES. 253 

Good reader, I 'Jl suppose, for once, 
Thou art no better than a dunce, 

But wishest to be famous ; 
1 Ml tell thee how, with decent luck, 
Thou may'st become as great a buck 

As any one could name us. 

When first in high life you commence. 
To virtue, reason, common sense. 

You '11 please to bid adieu, sir ; 
And, lest some brother rake be higher. 
Drink, till your blood be all on fire. 

And face of crimson hue, sir. 

Thus you '11 be dubb'd a dashing hladcy 
And, by the genteel world be said, 

To be a man of spirit ; 
For stylish folks despise the cliaps. 
Who think that they may rise, perhaps. 

By industry and merit. 

With lubric arts, and wily tongue. 
Debauch some maiden, fair and young, 

For that will be genteel ; 
Be not too scrupulous ; win the fair ; 
Then leave the frail one to despair : 

A rake should never feel. 



254 THE TIMES. 

When wine has made your courage stout, 
In midnight revel sally out, 

Insulting all you meet ; 
Play pretty pranks about the town, . 
Break windows, knock the watchmen down, 

Your fi*o]ic to complete ! 

Besides exhibiting your parts, 

You 're sure to win the ladies' hearts 

By dint of dissipation ; 
Since "every woman is a rake," 
A fool may know what steps to take 

To gain her approbation. 

By practising these famous rules, 
You'll gain from wicked men and Jools 

A world of admiration : 
And, as we know from good authority, 
Such folks compose a clear majority, 

There needs no hesitation. 



THE ART OF PRINTING. 

Blest be the memory of the Sage, 
Who taught the typographic page 
To teem with symbols, heav'n-design'd, 
The mute interpreters of mind. 

The world at length had learn'd to prize 
The art of speaking to the eyes, 
Which had, by modes which Cadmus taught, 
Giv'n immortality to thought; — 

When Faustus, by celestial skill, 
Found means to multiply at will, 
Those silent heralds of the kind, 
Which give ubiquity to mind, — 

Explored that Art, which brings to view, 
All that we know — our father's knew, — 
And which developes every hour 
That knowledge, which results in power, — 



256 THE ART OF PRINTING. 

That Art, which gives to man's control 
Celestial treasures of the soul, 
Transcending, many thousand fold, 
Golconda's gems, and Ophir's gold. 

What but the Printer's Art sublime, 
Can register the deeds of time, 
Recording all that 's said and done 
Most worthy note beneath the sun ? 

The poet, patriot, saint and sage 
Have habitations on his page, 
Are never absent when you call, 
Alike accessible to all. 

He introduces man to man, 

Of every nation, tribe or clan. 

The humble to the high — Most High, 

In palaces above the sky. 

Then bless the memory of the sage, 
Who taught the typographic page 
To teem with symbols, heav'n-design'd, 
The silent heralds of the mind. 



THE OLD BACHELOR: 

AN EPISTLE TO A LADY. 

What singular mortal is that, 
Who sits in yon cottage alone, 

Excepting an old tabby cat, 

Which gray with her master is grown ? 

Say, would you his origin know, 
Or if the odd mortal came here 

From regions above, or below ? 
The truth I will tell you, my dear. 

Dame Nature, a fanciful jade. 

As ancient philosophers say. 
When all other creatures were made, 

Had left a small portion of clay. 

The matter, indeed, was so crude 

She meant to have thrown it aside. 
At length in a frolicsome mood, 
, To make something of it she tried. 
17 



258 THE OLD BACHELOR. 

Her goody-sliip, worried about, 

Was forc'd lier old vessels to scrape, 

For matter to finish the lout 

To a biped, which had human shape. 

She moulded the comical stuff, 

'Till all ill one mass was combined ; 

His body, though quite odd enough, 
V/as perfect, compared with his mind. 

To a hard unsusceptible heart. 
She added a thick leaden skull, 

And threw in of pride such a part. 
As well might suffice a mogul : 

But did not implant in his breast 
A taste for those pleasures refined, 

Which give to enjoyment its zest, 
And soften the cares of the mind. 

Of wisdom she threw in a spice, 
But omitted to add comnion sense ; 

Dutch prudence a very large slice, 
To teach him the saving of pence. 

She gave him good honesty's phiz ; 
No mummy was ever more grave, 



THE OLD BACHELOR. 259 

Although, my dear madam, the quiz, 
To his wit's full extent is a knave. 

All this she perform'd in a jerk, 

And being well pleased with him, so far, 

She set herself gravely to work. 

And forced him to swallow a crow-bar. 

No wonder then, this queer machine, 

Which so rude, and so awkwardly m.ule is, 

By nobody ever was seen 

To how to the fairest of ladies.* 

At length he was usher'd to light, 

A half-alive kind of commodity, 
A thing, which you 'd say, at first sight, 

Was quite the quintessence of oddity. 

She planted him down in yon hut, 

To vegetate there with impunity, 
Till death shall prohibit the Put 

Any more from disgusting community. 

* The lady, to whom these lines were addressed, had been 
oflended at the insolence of the character wtio sat as the 
original for our picture. 



CALOllIC. 

Earth, sea and air abound in rare 

Minute caloric particles, 
Invisible indeed, but still 

Most energetic articles. 

Almighty power each atom gave 

Existence at creation ; 
Each would Omnipotence require 

For its annihilation. 

It now lies in a latent state, 

Anon in ardent aciion ; 
And He alone, who can create 

Can bring to naught a fraction. 

Chief agent in all acts of power 
Its atoms seem divinities ; 

Tempests, volcanoes, earthquakes are 
Mere plays of their affinities. 



CALORIC. 261 



'Tis tlieir's to drive the lightniiig^s car, 
To speed the shaft of thunder, 

Give earth an^atmosphere of fire. 
And rend the globe asunder I 



THE TLLS OF IDLENESS^. 

What pains and penalties attend 

The wight whose being's aim and end 

Is wholly self-enjoyment ! 
His easy chair becomes a rack, 
And all Pandora^s plagues attack 

The wretch who wants employments 

To shun the exquisite distress 
Which ever waits on idleness, 

He flies to dissipation ; 
Drinks deep to keep his spirits up^ 
And in the inebriating cup 

Drowns health and reputation. 

And now in Fashion's voitex whirFd,. 
A dandy of the genteel world. 

He figures in the ton, 
The wise man laughs, the simp^.e stare: 
To see the consequential air 

The silly rake puts on. 



lf^8 0?9 



T-HE ILLS OF IDL^ENESS, J263 

Now drives his curricle about 
To club, assembly, ball and rout, 

To waste his time aad treasure; 
•Gives sensual appetite the reins, 
And takes illimitable pains 

To ^eem a man of pleasure. 

The course of life such fools pursue 
Would worry down the wand'ring Jew, — 

Worse off than galley-slaves! 
And ten to one, about the time 
The man of virtue's in his prime, 

Such sots are in their graves. 

But if their days are 'le;flgthen'd out, 
By dint of constitution stout, 

In apathy and pain ; 
A ruby and carbuncled face 
Displays the signal of disgrace 

Like mark, erst set on Cairn 

Now dire ])ar^lysis and gout 
Parade their forces round about 

Ihe citadel of life ; 
In vain the doctor tries his skill ; 
His obstinate opponents still 

Are victors in the strife. 



264 THE ILLS OP IDLENESS. 

Disease, remorse, with joint attack. 
Now put at once upon the rack 

Their bodies and their souls ; 
Victims of vice, they suffer more 
Than Montezuma did of yore 

When stretchM on burning coals. 



* .^^ 



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